Seeking Asylum Down Under

Sheridan in trouble over use of the term 'illegals' - what are the odds this pamphleteer would be whipping up fear & loathing?

2011-11-03T00:09:00.004+11:00

Crikey reports today that "Sheridan flouts Press Council directive on ‘illegal’ asylum seekers". I put my two bob's worth into the fray, repeating sentiments oft articulated on this site:

"Sheridan is amongst a group of commentators on international affairs who dress narrow polemics up as reasoned analysis. This guy is a propagandist from way back.

The asylum seeker issue is fuelled by hysteria and incendiary demonising by his ilk and finds a largely credulous audience with their ready prejudices (like this twit above), ready to disbelieve the legitimate claims of asylum seekers who didn’t stand in a non-existent queue of orderly people waiting for whichever repressive regime they are escaping to allow them to migrate, or a third world stopover suffused with social and economic disadvantage. The silliness of this position overwhelms me at times.

The history of propaganda reveals you can package lies very successfully if they play to irrational fears and prejudices – it is especially difficult to counter when cloaked in the garb of ‘border security’. So the term ‘illegals’ is tailor made for the job!

The Coalition’s constant vilification of Labor for being weak on border protection has now morphed into a hypocritical concern for the rights of refugees. These of course - yes, you guessed it - will be protected on Nauru.

But how can anyone forget the Libs’ response to Tampa and kids overboard? Blame the victims for their own plight, extract as much sensationalism out of the role of people smugglers, put words in the mouth of ADF personnel who cannot answer for themselves, and then whip up public sentiment against refugees. Throw in dollops of confected outrage over your political opponents complete lack of preparedness to face down the ‘threat’ and you have your stock in trade ‘dog whistle’ response to the terrible plight of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Oh, I forgot - then you can set about making weak neighbouring countries complicit in policies that violate human rights! Sadly, the Labor government fell in behind this construct too easily! It now has an opportunity to put things right.

Is it possible that our general decency might be something Australians can be proud of again? A sensible, humane and orderly approach to offshore processing, which involves regional partners to their benefit, could be a crucial element to stymie the smuggling trade, whilst enabling on-shore processing within the community after mandatory health checks are completed in short-term detention.

Arrangements with key community groups to manage welfare, work-for-allowance strategies and language training could be developed to integrate asylum seekers in the larger society soon after their arrival. Regional areas with labour shortfalls could be targeted for short-term settlement in this respect.

The UNHCR & IOM could be brought in as partners in the process to lend their mandated legitimacy to the exercise. Isn’t it time to stop playing the narcissistic school-yard drop-kick with the bullying posture and derogatory language and start behaving like responsible grown-ups?"

What are the odds?

Media nasties getting warmed up on carbon tax and asylum seekers

2011-10-18T14:30:00.001+11:00

Occasionally I wander off the reservation into hostile territory to see how the restless are behaving. Today’s sojourn was Ackerman’s blog on the Daily Telegraph, with the catchy title, “Carbon tax is like a stink bomb in a very small car”, a nasty little polemic which can be read at:

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/carbon_tax_is_like_a_stink_bomb_in_a_very_small_car/

The comments section were like a tea party picnic convention, with the only thing missing being confederate flags, pit bulls and attack rifles. I left the following comment & withdrew to higher ground:

“Wow, what a grizzle fest.! This should be called Ackerman and his acolytes. Hey, you all trying to out do each other in the ‘who can be the most gratuitously vacuous and obnoxious’ stakes, you are no doubt frothing with excitement at the prospect of a political shock-jock like Abbott break dancing his way into office. Be careful what you wish for.

We get a daily diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on issues such as immigration & asylum seekers and important areas of public policy are ‘spun’ through the lens of media pamphleteers like this author, who knows how to pitch to a well-worn prejudice and who survives on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, ‘gotcha’ moments and limpid sensationalism. This is political analysis reduced to talk-show patter and infotainment for a presumed audience with a knowledge base and the concentration span of a distracted gnat. Oh, that’s right, I forgot, its a conspiracy of latte-sipping left wingers in inner city suburbs – spare me!! If you believe that drivel you and this author are made for each other.

Under the ‘great con’ Abbott has replaced the biking lycra with reflective lime industrial tops & roams bloke dominated small businesses and mining enterprises, filleting fish, carrying cartons of stuff, digging up stuff, butchering meat, rolling in oats and wheat, etc etc etc, pretending to care about working people and announcing the end of civilization as we know it. A true ‘man of the people’ with an eye to the big end of town (nudge, wink) …Howard battlers should be checking their back pockets because they’re being shafted again.”

Asylum seekers in Australia - can Australia 'grow up' and confront its past failings in this area of human rights?

2011-10-16T10:13:00.004+11:00

The Howard govt turned itself inside out to excise huge slices of the migration zone as part of its manic determination to repel 'boat people'. The Pacific Solution fiasco underpinned the 'illegal boat people' wedge Howard launched in 2001. I was part of the PM's task force that worked on these issues.

Sadly, the 'dog whistle' has been sounded loud and clear by Abbott and his conga line of wing nut mates, and the 'xenophobe' crowd have responded with alacrity. Within their simple-minded construct it's all the Gillard government's fault! Labor instigated a more humane approach to refugees, although it would have been improved by taking the Christmas Island stopover out of the equation and emphasising community processing. Rudd abolished the egregious TPV regime, which was a violation of refugee rights and a nasty scar on our human rights landscape. Having explored regional offshore processing options to negate the people smuggling trade, Gillard is now flagging a shift toward a more reasoned approach, having failed to get bi-partisanship on offshore processing!

The Coalition's constant vilification of Labor for being weak on border protection has now morphed into a hypocritical concern for the rights of refugees. These of course - yes, you guessed it - will be protected on Nauru.

But how can anyone forget the Libs' response to Tampa and kids overboard? Blame the victims for their own plight, extract as much sensationalism out of the role of people smugglers, put words in the mouth of ADF personnel who cannot answer for themselves, and then whip up public sentiment against refugees. Throw in dollops of confected outrage over your political opponents complete lack of preparedness to face down the 'threat' and you have your stock in trade 'dog whistle' response to the terrible plight of some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.

Oh, I forgot - then you can set about making weak neighbouring countries complicit in policies that violate human rights! Sadly, the Labor government fell in behind this construct too easily!

The cruel stupidity of processing asylum seekers in excised areas (unable to access the same legal rights as those who reach our migration zone by air) or in countries unwilling to treat people humanely, must end. Either by default or Machiavellian manoeuvring, Labor can now align our Migration Act with international law and refugee conventions and kick the Howard construct to the 'shit house' of history.

Asylum seekers in Australia - New approaches to onshore processing

2011-10-16T09:51:00.003+11:00

Cabinet ministers have begun discussing whether to send asylum seekers to regional areas in need of workers.

Anyone who reads this blog (at least 5 people) will know I put a number of points to the PM recently on ways and means of managing onshore processing. Trawling through Poll Bludger this morning I stumbled across a comment that quotes Misha Schubert's piece in The Age, entitled 'Off the boat, into the bush'.

It seems these ideas are percolating around policy makers in the immigration area!

Asylum seekers in Australia - PM moves to treat asylum seekers more humanely

2011-10-14T09:54:00.002+11:00

Writing in The Age, Michael Gordon, reports on the sharp shift in the Gillard Government's approach to asylum seekers:

"PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has conceded defeat on her asylum seeker policy, forcing her to signal a shift to more community-based processing of people who arrive in Australia by boat.

In a humiliating admission of failure, Ms Gillard finally conceded last night her asylum seeker legislation had collapsed - but insisted she remained committed to the Malaysia people-swap plan that the bill aimed to legalise.

In the meantime, the government says it will process more asylum seekers arriving by boat in the community to stop an expected increase in numbers overloading the immigration detention system."

A day in Parliament: Deliverance day dawns, denouement dunks demogoguery, dickheads declaim democratic default, delousing dispatches dem downstairs

2011-10-13T08:47:00.008+11:00

Asylum seekers in Australia - Open letter to the Prime Minister

2011-09-17T10:50:00.002+10:00

Prime Minister, I'm one of those rusted on Labor supporters who let my membership lapse prior to the last election because of disillusionment with the drift away from core Labor values in the 'business' of politics.

Under the Howard government mandatory detention of asylum seekers evolved into a tragic farce. Australians were alarmingly sanguine about the travesty. Its worst manifestation was the Pacific Solution, which I became embroiled in as AusAID Director of the Nauru aid program. Of particular concern to me were the tawdry misuses of official aid under the Pacific Solution and the downstream implications of the strategy, which was made up on the run by bureaucrats doing their level best to engineer good outcomes from bad political motives. The perfunctory official approaches adopted toward self-harming detainees were another disturbing aspect.

As the Party responsible for the legislative framework (in particular 'mandatory detention') within which Howard evolved his refugee 'house of horrors', it is appropriate that a Labor Govt put Australia's human rights compliance at the top of the international agenda and put our domestic laws ‘house’ back in order."

Tragically, the failure to shine a light on the true mentality behind the prosecution of these earlier policies saw the ghost of the Pacific Solution and the shop of horrors that was the Howard Govt's refugee program continue to linger in the corridors of power.

As an erstwhile member of the Howard Government's task force on 'illegal' migration I am completely cognisant of the issues surrounding the Bali framework process. I am supportive of a regional approach that stops boats but does'nt breach the UN convention on treatment of refugees. Your current brinkmanship is no doubt good politics, but it fails to satisfy the requirements of a progressive charter in this area.

The mandatory detention regime opened a Pandora's box of opportunities for low rent political agendas, which politicians like Howard and Abbott have exploited ruthlessly. Labor is continually playing catch up, rather than biting the bullet by re-examining the rationale for long-term mandatory detention and changing the tenor of the whole debate.

The unedifying sight of Labor politicians jumping on the xenophobia bandwagon was one of the key reasons I left the party, as I saw defenceless people used as betting chips in a nasty bidding war.

Labor could re-capture the high ground by reviewing mandatory detention and off-shore processing policy and wring the necessary changes? A public information program to explain the reasoning behind the changes, including Australia's obligations under international refugee and human rights instruments, could usher a new awareness of our collective standing and responsibility as a defender of human rights.

This would be attractive to the progressive side of the Labor support base and small 'L' Liberals. Maybe its time to make our general decency something Australians can be proud of again! A sensible, humane and orderly approach to offshore processing, which involves regional partners to their benefit, could be a crucial element to stymie the smuggling trade, whilst enabling on-shore processing within the community after mandatory health checks are completed in short-term detention.

Arrangements with key community groups to manage welfare, work-for-allowance strategies and language training could be developed to integrate asylum seekers in the larger society soon after their arrival. Regional areas with labour shortfalls could be targeted for short-term settlement in this respect.

The UNHCR, IOM could be brought in as partners in the process to lend their mandated legitimacy to the exercise. Isn't it time to stop playing to the reactionary's game book? I for one would rejoin the ALP if this approach was followed.

Asylum seekers in Australia - mandatory detention & offshore processing are failed policies!

2011-09-01T13:47:00.003+10:00

Howard's policies toward refugees wrought immense change in my life. The alarming shift this country took in 2001 left me angry and dispirited. I felt the moral and ethical basis of our commitment to protect human rights had been compromised, and that vulnerable human beings in need of help had become pawns in a ruthless political agenda.

After Rudd's election Australia continued to disregard human rights in the treatment of asylum seekers. The government detained new arrivals on Christmas Island, which was commissioned by the Howard Govt when it became abundantly clear Nauru was a failed option.

Throughout the decade since 2001 the usual suspects have branded irregular boat arrivals as 'queue jumpers' to justify their treatment as criminals or 'illegals'. With the latest High Court decision it has become painfully clear that the government must be required to treat new arrivals humanely and to counter attempts by politicians, media and other commentators to demonize them for political and other purposes.

When Rudd came to power I wrote to the then Immigration Minister, Sen Evans, as follows:

"Under the previous government mandatory detention of asylum seekers evolved into a tragic farce played out under the gaze of key UN watchdog bodies. In Australia, apart from refugee advocate groups, the general population was alarmingly sanguine about the travesty. Its worst manifestation was the Pacific Solution, which I became embroiled in as AusAID Director of the Nauru aid program. Thankfully, one of the earliest actions of the Rudd Govt was to abolish the Pacific Solution. However, I think the Govt has to go further...

The Howard Govt thumbed its nose at the 'UN Committee against Torture' in 2005, standing by its asylum seeker policies as ‘just & fair’. In fact Howard et al thumbed their noses at international human rights instruments throughout their tenure and actively sought to undermine the credibility of the UN committee process.

Thankfully this dark chapter is over. To signal that the change wrought by the Rudd Govt represents more than window dressing, and to keep faith with UN and other international processes, I suggest a thorough judicial review is needed of the asylum seeker policies and programs of the previous Govt. The review Terms of Reference should include, but not be limited to, an investigation of:

1. Implementation of the Pacific Solution (this of course should encompass the role and use of official aid)

2. Wrongful detention of refugees and permanent residents of Australia (taking account of the previous reviews and the report of the Commonwealth Ombudsman)

3. Operation and financing of detention facilities on the mainland and offshore

4. Wrongful repatriation of asylum seekers (a particular concern of the UN Committee against Torture)

5. Influence of political staffers and Ministers in the determination of immigration decisions

6. Role of the Prime Minister's task force on 'illegal' migration'

7. Influence of 'understandings' and 'deals' with neighbouring countries on the management of Australia's refugee policies and programs

Of particular concern to me were the tawdry misuses of official aid under the Pacific Solution and the downstream implications of the strategy, which was made up on the run by bureaucrats doing their level best to engineer good outcomes from bad political motives. The perfunctory official approaches adopted toward self-harming detainees were another disturbing aspect.

As the Party that put in place the legislative framework (in particular 'mandatory detention') within which Howard evolved his refugee 'house of horrors', it is appropriate that a Labor Govt put Australia's human rights compliance at the top of the international agenda and put our domestic laws ‘house’ back in order."

Tragically, the failure to shine a light on the true mentality behind the prosecution of these policies saw the ghost of the Pacific Solution and the shop of horrors that was the Howard Govt's refugee program continue to linger in the corridors of power.

Will Labor now bite the bullet and review its mandatory detention policy and wring the necessary changes? A public information program to explain the reasoning behind the changes, including Australia's obligations under international refugee and human rights instruments, could usher a new awareness of our collective standing and responsibility as a defender of human rights.

Abbott watch - what motivates the hate rallies?

2011-08-23T18:52:00.003+10:00

Crikey has a piece today by Bernard Keane, pondering the question, "What motivates the Parl house rallies?"

I've proffered my two bob's worth:

"Abbott and his conga line of media cronies are continuing the thinly camouflaged campaign to win government by trashing the Government’s record and its attempt to put a price on carbon. The science on climate change is routinely questioned and vilified by skilled dog whistlers and commentators compromised by their links to vested interests opposed to carbon pricing. A largely ill-informed electorate swallow the sound bites and media grabs of this shoddy bunch and are conned into believing their life-styles are under threat.

Abbott pretends to care about the little people while doing the bidding of the mining and power companies. He is a fear monger-er of the worst sort. We have seen his type of politician down through the ages. They set up straw men to knock down and claim the credit for ‘saving’ the people from some imaginary onslaught. He pitches a different message to different audiences, depending on their relative levels of literacy - in the case of the recent rally outside Parliament three word slogans were more than enough. Demagogues always operate like this - it is in their DNA to tailor the message to suit the crowd and they are gifted at pressing the right fear buttons with confected outrage and anger.

Another plank of the strategy is to demonize the Labor leadership, much in the way the Tea Party is demonizing Obama’s leadership in America. They paint a picture of disunity, betrayal of the body politic, a ‘stab in the back’ for decent citizens by a government beholden to ‘special interests’ and unspecified ‘elites’. More coded dog whistling to convince the electorate that their government is weak and incapable of protecting the country from outside threats and the export of jobs. Our PM is branded a liar, wooden, childless and weak. A nasty legend has been woven by misogynistic spin meisters who want their boy in power, and they will do anything (within the law presumably) to achieve it.

The Coalition has gained rich pickings from fear-mongering, as evidenced by the Queensland vote at the last general election. The ‘tea party’ rump of the One Nation party has drifted back to the LNP, in thrall to simple minded messages on debt & deficit, the carbon & mining taxes and good ole migrant & refugee bashing.

In much of the media and shock-jock land narrow sectional interests get a helpful leg up in most areas of debate on public policy. We get a diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on issues such as immigration & asylum seekers and important areas of public policy are ‘spun’ through the lens of media celebrities who survive on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, ‘gotcha’ moments and limpid sensationalism. Political analysis has been reduced to talk-show patter and infotainment for a presumed audience with the concentration span of a distracted gnat.

Misinformation and outright disinformation have become the currency of many mainstream commentators. The template for this was set up with the formation of a minority government. Many in the print, radio and television media did not like this result. They did not anticipate it, they have no control over it, and they want it gone. A political shock-jock like Abbott thrives in this landscape.

He has replaced the biking lycra with reflective lime industrial tops & roams bloke dominated small businesses and mining enterprises, filleting fish, carrying cartons of stuff, digging up stuff, butchering meat, rolling in oats and wheat, etc etc etc, pretending to care about working people and announcing the end of civilization as we know it. A true ‘man of the people’ with an eye to the big end of town (nudge, wink) …Howard battlers should be checking their back pockets because they’re being conned again."

I've said it all before but nothing has changed so I'll say it again....

Alert & alarmed: Canberrans worried successive anti-carbon tax protests lowering average IQ of Canberra

2011-08-22T08:41:00.004+10:00

Our ABC - apparently obtuse, rude interviews are someone's notion of playing 'devil's advocate'

2011-08-18T11:18:00.004+10:00

I recently made the following complaint to ABC concerning a RN interview between Sabra Lane and Treasurer Swan:

"As with an earlier interview on RN Lane has conducted a rude, simple-minded interview completely lacking in balance and cogent reasoning. It came across as a Coalition inspired attack on the most important structural change to our economy in well over a decade.

An excellent deconstruction of Lane's earlier interview with Swan can be found at http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/

Every step of the way ABC reporters are out digging for negative reactions to the package, whipping up more fear in place of reasoned analysis of the package as a whole. Why isn't the focus on the reactions of people who actually know a thing or two about the implications of the package. I did'nt hear any question from Lane on today's survey of the reaction of economists to climate change policies.

This type of journalism is execrable and doing our country a great disservice. Many people are sick of the editorialising virus that is sweeping the ABC, seeking to shift opinion on the major issues of the day. In your quest for so-called 'balance' some dreadful 'pamphleteers' get a regular airing, such as those from thoroughly compromised think tanks such as the IPA.

No wonder the PM's polling is going south on matters of national importance such as carbon pricing. Our ABC is out there doing the reactionary's job for them. Journalists like Lane need to go back to journalism school. Poor fella my country..."

I received the following reply from Kieran Doyle of ABC's Audience and Consumer Affairs Dept:

"Thank you for your email regarding the interview with the federal Treasurer on The World Today.

Your concerns have been investigated by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC. We have reviewed the broadcast, assessed it against the ABC’s editorial standards and sought and considered material provided by ABC News.

The adversarial or ‘devil’s advocate’ style of interviewing, employed at times by Sabra Lane, can generate a strong and mixed reaction from the public. Part of the technique of the ‘devil’s advocate’ approach is to take major points of criticism from various sources, including opposing politicians, and put them to the interviewee. This can sometimes give the audience the impression that these are the personal views of the interviewer. This is not the case.

When she is doing a one-on-one interview she has a duty to conduct a testing interview that does not allow the interviewee to use the occasion as a political platform. It is her duty to put other points of view to the interviewee and her responsibility to make reasonable efforts to ensure that the questions are answered.

Having reviewed the interview with the Treasurer against the impartiality provisions of the ABC Editorial Policies, Audience and Consumer Affairs is satisfied that the interview is in keeping with those standards. The questions posed to Mr Swan were relevant and based strictly on their news value. He was afforded ample opportunity to clearly state his views in response. We are satisfied that the interview was suitably respectful and courteous. Audience and Consumer Affairs has concluded that the interview is in keeping with sections 4.1, 4.2, 4.4 and 4.5 of the ABC Editorial Policies.

Sabra Lane conducted an equally rigorous interview with the Leader of the Opposition on AM that same week. ABC Radio current affairs programs AM, The World Today and PM have provided a vast and diverse range of principal relevant perspectives on the government’s carbon package and related issues, and no one perspective has been unduly favoured over another."

I replied:

"Oh sure, the trouble is the questions are obtuse, poorly researched and delivered with all the charm of a rampaging buffalo..."

Seeking asylum in Australia - Public policy struggles to match public opinion

2011-08-16T09:48:00.003+10:00

The looming spectre of the Manus Island detention facility re-opening signals a monumental failure of public policy. I was prepared to give the Gillard Govt the benefit of the doubt on the Malaysia swap arrangement but re-visiting the Pacific Solution is a disaster.

Yesterday's poll in the Age suggests public opinion remains wedded to mandatory detention but a clear majority want asylum seekers processed in Australia. Poll Bludger has a good post on the poll this morning as follows:

"Nielsen struck a blow for transparency yesterday by releasing comprehensive data for their polling on asylum seekers, featuring detail on the questions and how they were asked, breakdowns by state, location, gender, age and voting intention, and no fewer than eight tables cross-tabulating various results for the eight questions asked. They even went so far as to include the raw numbers they reached after weighting the responses for age, gender and location, not that this particularly tells us much.

The poll also deserves credit for posing thoughtfully crafted questions on a complex and contentious subject. No doubt taking inspiration from Murray Goot and Ian Watson’s recent paper on public opinion and asylum seekers, which noted that results had been heavily influenced by “the way questions are framed, the kinds of questions that precede these questions (and) the range of possible responses the questions allow”, the Nielsen report offered the following:

It is important to note that the results of opinion polls on this issue are more sensitive to the wording of the questions asked than for many other topics. This is because the issues are often emotional for some and complicated for all. Respondent knowledge on this subject is never complete. The task of adequately condensing complex options into fair but meaningful questions is also a difficult one.

The questions in this poll were stripped of their political context as much as possible. For example the ‘sent to another country to be assessed’ option was not offered in the context of deterrence, nor was any human or financial cost alluded to. It was not offered as Labor or Coalition policy (e.g. by calling it the ‘Malaysian solution’ or the ‘Pacific solution’).

The Fairfax papers asserted that the poll showed voters “at odds with both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott and the perception that attitudes have hardened against asylum seekers”, and certainly the figures point to a more liberal attitude than the tenor of political debate would suggest. However, The Age gilded the lily a little with a graphic showing 60 per cent believed those assessed as genuine refugees should be allowed to stay in Australia permanently. It takes a bit of digging to appreciate that this excludes the 15 per cent who didn’t believe the asylum seekers should be assessed at all, having preferred that they be “sent out to sea”. The number supporting settlement in Australia was nonetheless a very solid 49 per cent, although there remained a combined 44 per cent in favour of the less liberal options of temporary protection visas (29 per cent support) and sending boats back out to sea (15 per cent). The same issue occurs with The Age’s figures for whether boat arrivals should be held in detention (64 per cent) or allowed into the community (32 per cent): putting the aforementioned 15 per cent back in (together with the 4 per cent “other/don’t know“), the results come down to 52 per cent and 26 per cent.

Regarding the treatment of asylum seekers on arrival, the results can be broken down thus:

22% – Allowed to live in the Australian community
12% – Detained in Australia, excluding children
17% – Detained in Australia, including children
4% – Sent to another country, allowed to live in community there
23% – Sent to another country and detained there
4% – Assessed for refugee status, no opinion on detention
15% – No assessment for refugee status: sent back out to sea
4% – Other/don’t know

And on their treatment after being assessed for refugee status:

49% – Settled in Australia
29% – Granted temporary protection visas
2% – Returned to country of origin
15% – No assessment for refugee status: sent back out to sea
5% – Other/don’t know

To those who are ready to junk the orthodox view on this subject, I would offer a few notes of caution. Certainly there was no majority in favour of assessing refugee status in Australia at the time of the Tampa episode, when Nielsen and Morgan polls had between 68 per cent and 77 per cent in favour of turning boats away. It is hardly plausible that so many of these respondents have had changes of heart that only 15 per cent now remain. What it likely shows is how the finer point of public opinion on this issue are shaped by the terms of the debate at the time. The symbolism in August/September 2001 involved boats being either allowed to land or held at bay by the military – only as the Howard government scrambled to effect its “Pacific solution” was the public alerted to the fact that the latter course only constituted half a policy. This may have led to a change in questions posed and answers given in opinion polls, but it doesn’t follow that there was a shift in underlying attitudes.

This leads to a point that occurs to me about the wording of Nielsen’s “sent to another country to be assessed” option: for many respondents, Nauru might not register as “another country” in the sense that Malaysia does, as it is perceived either as a dependency of Australia or too insigificant to qualify as a “country”. This option may accordingly have been interpreted by some as an invitation to sign on for the Malaysia solution. If Nielsen had at least added enough political context to allow for the restoration of the Pacific solution as a response option, the poll may have told a somewhat different story."

In June I wrote:

"Labor is scurrying to find a regional approach that stops boats but does'nt breach the UN convention on treatment of refugees. It will not adopt the full Pacific Solution, but in the eyes of human rights advocates it is failing to meet its progressive charter in this area. The mandatory detention regime opened a Pandora's box of opportunities for low rent political agendas, which politicians like Howard and Abbott have exploited ruthlessly. Labor is continually playing catch up, rather than biting the bullet by re-examining the rationale for long-term mandatory detention and changing the tenor of the whole debate. Leadership requires courage to take the steps to change opinion through education and cogent debate...The unedifying sight of Labor politicians jumping on the xenophobia bandwagon has human rights advocates aghast as they see defenceless people used as betting chips in a nasty bidding war. Unmitigated acts of bastardry continue unabated, leaving desperate people with little choice but to self-harm or cry out through extreme acts."

Earlier I wrote:

"I was involved in the aid component of the Pacific Solution and it was the most corrosive experience of my career. I recently commented on an article by Robert Manne, who has advocated Manus Island be revisited as an offshore detention facility, as follows:

" I was involved in the first wave of the Pacific Solution, which offered aid 'incentives' to GoPNG to re-activate the military base at Manus as a detention centre.

I visited said centre and was tasked to explore Manus Island for community based activities in health & education that AusAID could support as a way of oiling the wheels of the Provincial Govt. Aid to these areas had not been considered until the centre opened. The whole approach was under the table and pretty tacky. I was far from comfortable with the strategy.

There were other sleights of hand in terms of expenditures kept off the books of costs that were facility-related. The aging facility is by the water, with a respectable mess for support staff and visitors, with conditions for the asylum seekers marginal at best in an extremely hot & humid place.

Manus is a relatively poor province of PNG, with high levels of youth unemployment. Doubtless the centre will be refurbished and substantial resources will be applied to its operation. This in itself can cause problems with surrounding peoples who are somewhat disadvantaged."

The Manus component of the Pacific Solution was marginally better than Nauru because the PNG Government is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, but the same issues that saw East Timor reject the concept of housing a regional detention facility also apply to Manus. The detainees will be housed in tiny 'dongas' and fed in open mess facilities. The place is hot, humid and malaria prone. It is a debilitating situation behind wire - why do we insist on treating people with claims to refugee status like prisoners of war?"

The more things change the more they stay the same. The lack of bi-partisanship on asylum seeker policy will ensure a bleak landscape for those of us concerned over Australia's failure to meet her human rights obligations.

The cult of 'balance' discernible in US media also infecting our politics

2011-07-30T11:24:00.005+10:00

I was struck by an article by Paul Krugman writing in the NY Times. He writes:

"The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation."

It does not stretch credulity too far by suggesting the same is happening here over the carbon tax imbroglio. The difference is that Abbott has not been able to take Australia hostage yet, but it is not through a want of trying. Krugman goes on,

"Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?

The answer, it turns out, is yes. And this is no laughing matter: The cult of balance has played an important role in bringing us to the edge of disaster. For when reporting on political disputes always implies that both sides are to blame, there is no penalty for extremism. Voters won’t punish you for outrageous behavior if all they ever hear is that both sides are at fault."

Now that resonates with our experience. Our media has caught the same virus that sees extremist wing-nuts being trotted out on mainstream media platforms to sprout their propaganda, all in the name of 'balance'. On the ABC we get reactionary commentators and think tank apparatchiks spruiking extremism on a daily basis, lambasting the PM and vilifying the science on carbon warming. Cogent debate is sidelined by gross misrepresentation of facts, and shock jocks are given more credence than serious investigative journalists. Krugman again, with inserts by moi:

The problem with American/Australian politics right now is Republican/Coalition extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Our ABC - 7.30 plumbs new depths with Nixon interview

2011-07-28T19:58:00.003+10:00

I had the misfortune to catch the Sales interview with Nixon tonight. What an awful interrogation. Thought I'd drop them a line, as follows:

"I have been underwhelmed by the quality of interviews on the re-vamped 7.30 but was prepared to give it another go as it can take time for front people to find their footing. I don't think there is much chance for Uhlmann as he just projects his own narrow take on most items. However, I had thought Sales had more substance.

After tonight's interview with Christine Nixon I have concluded it is a lost cause. We were treated to an aggressive, simple-minded interrogation that would have done Fox News proud. I am thoroughly sick of the ABC presenting as a 'soft' arm of News Ltd.

Nixon rattled corrupt male cages within Vicpol and was targeted as a result. It is a great shame that honest cops are subject to this type of demonization but welcome to modern leadership - Australia style! If you happen to be a woman the white-anting will be relentless and largely unquestioned by our fearless media."

Any lessons for Australia from Norway atrocity?

2011-07-26T10:52:00.018+10:00

We have learned over the last couple of days that the Oslo mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, was a reactionary Islamophobe with a messianic bent. Progressive politics was conceived by him as the arch enemy of his crusade to reprise a 'christian', white Norway under a Templar banner. Overtones of Third Reich mythologizing and racial theory are discernible in his largely plagiarized manifesto. He appears to be a self-obsessed sociopath with little or no empathy with his fellow citizens. No doubt the full extent of his pathology will emerge over the next days, weeks and months, and to what extent he had links with internal and external players. It is of passing note that he appears to have been drawn to the ideas of John Howard, Cardinal Pell and Keith Windschuttle. I'm sure all of these men would be horrified by this connection but why are they in the picture at all?

A shameful xenophobia has been whipped up in this country by politicians and their apologists, particularly targeting Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers, whenever they need to shore up electoral support. They pander to a dark underbelly, where sub-cultures lurk that frequently find voice through an 'easy racism'. One Nation tapped into this phenomenon and a key legacy of the Howard years sees Coalition politicians exploiting this tendency ruthlessly. Misrepresentation of facts and ethnic stereotyping are the calling cards (or ‘dog whistles’) of ‘culture warriors’ within politics and the media, pandering to the ignorant and misinformed.

The Coalition has gained rich pickings from fear-mongering, as evidenced by the Queensland vote at the last general election. The 'tea party' rump of the One Nation party has drifted back to the LNP, in thrall to simple minded messages on debt & deficit, the carbon & mining taxes and good ole migrant & refugee bashing. The relentless banging of the fear drum on immigration and asylum seekers has enabled large swathes of the reactionary commentariat to shape public opinion in an unhealthy way. Commercial TV has been a disgrace for a long time in reporting immigration & asylum seekers issues.

The trend in recent times has been for serious current affairs programs to use Fox News style approaches to covering political issues. We get the constant crosses to so-called 'expert' commentators, many of whom are so politically biased as to verge on the farcical. There is also the tendency to use the lumpen media stalwarts as guest commentators. ABC News 24 constantly relies on so-called 'expert' commentary to 'fill' the analysis pieces - whose regular currency in trade is indictment of progressive policies and glad handling of reactionary approaches.

The skewed opinion settings of the mainstream media have galled me for a long time. Narrow sectional interests get a helpful leg up in most areas of debate on public policy. We also get a diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on issues such as immigration & asylum seekers; a plethora of important areas of public policy are 'spun' through the lens of media celebrities who survive on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, 'gotcha' moments and limpid sensationalism. Political analysis has been reduced to talk-show patter and infotainment for a presumed audience with the concentration span of a distracted gnat.

As a result of our simple-minded and largely mean-spirited approach to asylum seekers:

. We still see children behind bars because their parents or guardians had the courage & temerity to arrive on our shores unannounced

. Many accepted refugees struggle to find public housing and to get a toe hold on the economic ladder

. Asylum seekers in the twilight limbo of our detention centres are self-harming again out of desperation with a system that grinds painfully slowly and which treats them like criminals

. Trash language such as 'illegals', 'boat people', 'queue jumpers' and the rest of the nasty lexicon continues to pepper our air waves and be bandied about by politicians, shock jocks and right wing pamphleteers so as to press the buttons of the permanently credulous and the pygmy intellects of the lumpen mob

. A promise to reprise the Pacific Solution and to punish refugees with reinstatement of the draconian TPV regime remains a centerpiece of the Coalition's policy platform - twin violations of international human rights and refugee instruments

. The Government has been forced into harsh arrangements with neighbouring countries to counter the political wedge shaped around fear of asylum seekers arriving by boat.

. Migrants of Islamic faith continue to feel marginalized and demonized by the 'hate' media and fear-mongering demagogues whose dog-whistling clearly influenced a disturbed mind in Norway.

On another front we find the 32-year-old Norwegian Christian fundamentalist also accepted the conspiratorial thinking of some climate sceptics. Crikey has the story.

Thanks to Larvatus Prodeo

Bombs in Oslo - appalling coverage on our ABC

2011-07-23T10:38:00.005+10:00

I sent the following feedback to ABC24 this morning:

"What a woeful coverage. Constant speculation whether it was a mad man, a terrorist or an alien. Constant simple-minded analysis as to Norway's international engagement, which is substantial and complex. Constant nonsense over whether Norway is prone to extremist politics which, like every country in the region, it clearly is through just a cursory analysis of the last few decades. There is a growing extreme right wing fundamentalism that has international links and there are home grown jihadi groups with possible aspirations to take domestic action in protest over Norway's involvement in Afghanistan.

Perhaps if you spent less time worrying about the nonsense on social media sites and more time employing people with some knowledge of international affairs you might do better. Our ABC has caught the dumbing down bug which inhabits commercial media. At least some of your interlocutors have tried to make some sense of the situation, warning against jumping to conclusions.

The immediate protocol for an event like this is locking down the crime scene, forensic analysis of the explosion area and an ever widening net of investigation based on evidence. This can take quite a while. Idle speculation on behalf of dim-witted journalists trying to get ahead of the facts is extremely counter-productive."

Abbott's 3m vision - misogyny, mediocrity and mendacity

2011-07-18T10:32:00.007+10:00

The current Abbott stratagem is working a treat. He is tapping into tendencies in the Oz body politic that have endured over many generations. There are many that distrust and dislike well educated forceful women. I continually hear opprobrium bandied about on Gillard's marital status, her childlessness, her atheism, her industrial advocacy background (she must be a socialist). A nasty legend has been woven by misogynistic spin meisters who want their boy in power, and they will do anything (within the law presumably) to achieve it.

And then there's mediocrity. What has passed for journalism over the last months has been truly sad. Misinformation and outright disinformation have been the currency of many mainstream commentators. The template for this was set up with the formation of a minority government. Many in the print, radio and television media did not like this result. They did not anticipate it, they have no control over it, and they want it gone. As Keating said the other day in describing Abbott's response, 'if you are not going to give me the job I'll wreck the place'. Well yes, and he has friends to help him.

However, to get away with such a strategy you have to presume a highly credulous audience. Why do people fall for demagoguery in the first place? It taps into predilections & prejudices and panders to fear and ignorance. The anti-carbon tax campaign does all these things. Informed analysis is ignored by many in favour of dissemblers and hate-mongers. This is how the tea party operates in the US. As the esteemed intellectual Harold Bloom summed it up in a RN interview recently, the tea party signifies the growth of oligarchy in America and a creeping fascism.

Oh, and of course the whole stratagem is underpinned by mendacity. To make this work you have to paint your opponent as the 'liar'. I haven't heard an ounce of truth from any of Abbott's apologists, and certainly not from the man himself. He lies for a living and as good as admitted it in a notorious 7.30 report interview. Yet, he has the gall to fashion a political scare campaign around the central motif of the PM having lied about a carbon tax. Why does this work? The answer comes back to misogyny and mediocrity. We are mired in a reactionary mindset that enables this type of low-rent politics to succeed. Howard did it and now Abbott is doing it, and we are having it done to us.

The only way to counter this approach is to keep stating the simple truth. Opinion is malleable but the facts don't lie. The nay-sayers on climate change action can find comfort in Abbott's magic pudding, but it is illusory and will end in tears for generations to come. Putting a price on carbon is essential to achieving structural change in our economy; structural change is necessary to achieve the investment in clean energy solutions; clean energy solutions are essential for a sustainable future. It ain't rocket science, but a difficult pill to swallow in challenging economic times. Is this country to become a model for positive change or a sniveling, whingeing echo of the tea party phenomenon? Australians must be very careful what they wish for.....and keep the faith folks.

The editorializing virus sweeping the ABC strikes the World Today

2011-07-13T12:40:00.005+10:00

The Political Sword deconstructed an interview by Sabra Lane on RN the other day.

Lane was at again today on the World Today with a typically one-sided interview with Swan.

I sent the following feedback to the World Today website:

"As with an earlier interview on RN Lane has conducted a rude, simple-minded interview completely lacking in balance and cogent reasoning. It came across as a Coalition inspired attack on the most important structural change to our economy in well over a decade.

An excellent deconstruction of Lane's earlier interview with Swan can be found at
http://www.thepoliticalsword.com/

Every step of the way ABC reporters are out digging for negative reactions to the package, whipping up more fear in place of reasoned analysis of the package as a whole.

Why isn't the focus on the reactions of people who actually know a thing or two about the implications of the package. I did'nt hear any question from Lane on today's survey of the reaction of economists to climate change policies. This type of journalism is execrable and doing our country a great disservice.

Many people are sick of the editorializing virus that is sweeping the ABC, seeking to shift opinion on the major issues of the day. In your quest for so-called 'balance' some dreadful 'pamphleteers' get a regular airing, such as those from thoroughly compromised think tanks such as the IPA.

No wonder the PM's polling is going south on matters of national importance such as carbon pricing. Our ABC is out there doing the reactionary's job for them. Journalists like Lane need to go back to journalism school. Poor fella my country...."

Our ABC losing the plot again on carbon pricing - Q & A becomes a parody of itself

2011-07-12T00:15:00.010+10:00

And so it goes. Labor continues to receive the worst polling in living memory and the national broadcaster continues to operate as it if it was a promotional arm of the Coalition's media machine.

I think the msm have never forgiven JG for stitching up a deal for minority govt. Few, if any, of the gallery predicted the minority govt result and they gave Gillard a snow ball's chance of negotiating with the rural independents and then expected the deal would go to hell in a hand-basket under the relentless fear campaign of Abbott. In fact the legislative record of this govt is pretty impressive.

ABC 24 is littered with one liners and headlines slamming the carbon price package. It is relentless. Every step of the way ABC reporters are out digging for negative reactions to the package, whipping up more fear in place of reasoned analysis of the package as a whole.

An excellent deconstruction of a Radio National interview with Swan can be found at the Political Sword blog.

What will be a truly important structural change for this economy was excoriated by a relentless patter of negativity and spleen from those who are either the authors of, or who have swallowed, the fear and misinformation campaign of vested interests and the Abbott Coalition.

At one of the meetings attended by Hockey, an idiot suggested it was time guns were used to convey their opposition to the carbon tax. This is what comes of a fear and loathing campaign. I can't help but think a big whack of misogynistic bigotry underpins a lot of the mindless opprobrium hurled at the PM. It truly reeks.

Yesterday we had Q & A served up to us. I gave up watching the show some time back as I thought it had become a vehicle for Jones to interpolate his oh so clever interrogations of Labor politicians in a captive state. All pretty poor form & tedious, redolent with gotcha and simple-minded "oh I know what you knew when someone else thought you knew" moments (argghhh).

I followed a ball by ball account of the show on one of our national political blogs and sent the following bouquet:

"I didn't watch your show as I foresaw Jones grandstanding as usual, being gratuitously rude to the PM with his oh so clever interruptions (there's something about strong women that gets your Tone), and the usual ill-informed, half-baked questions that suggest a critical acuity of minus 3.

I have been following reporting of tonight's show on several political websites and the overall verdict is the PM was excellent under fire and the audience was completely negative.

Tone should take the time to read Lyndsay Tanner's Sideshow and think a little about the profession of journalism, and then take a hard look at what passes for 'analysis' under the guise of political commentary on our ABC. Then he should ask himself, 'did I make a difference'?

As it stood, prior to his joining the 'let's destroy Julia' crowd (group/hive think courtesy of that bastion of balanced journalism, Uncle Rupe) I would have said he was holding his own.

With performances like tonight's and so many in recent times on Q & A he has become part of the problem with today's msm - all gotcha moments and simple-minded wind. Keep up the great work.......Poor fella my country."

Meanwhile Abbott has replaced the biking lycra with reflective lime industrial tops & roams bloke dominated small businesses and mining enterprises, filleting fish, carrying cartons of stuff, digging up stuff, butchering meat, rolling in oats and wheat, etc etc etc, pretending to care about working people and announcing the end of civilization as we know it. A true 'man of the people' with an eye to the big end of town (nudge, wink)...Howard battlers should be checking their back pockets because they're being conned again.

Asylum seekers in Australia: Memories of Tampa, a leaky boat and a dodgy government

2011-07-07T10:32:00.008+10:00

ABC Online is reporting this morning that "former Defence Force personnel have spoken out about the Tampa and children overboard affair, accusing the Howard government of manipulating events for political purposes".

I was in harness in PNG when the Tampa situation arose. My heart sank and my stomach churned as I knew Howard was the type of politician to twist these circumstances to his political benefit. Little did I know to what extent I would be dragged into the disgusting quagmire that became known as the Pacific Solution.

I have mused on the experience as follows:

"In August 2001 news reports began filtering through that the Australian Government led by John Howard as Prime Minister had detained a boatload of mainly Afghani refugees on the high seas. The cargo vessel was the Tampa, a word that has become etched indelibly into my consciousness. The ‘boat people’ saga had begun. Ten weeks later the Australian people returned the Howard Government to office in a general election and the ignominious strategy to label offshore asylum seekers ‘illegals’ and detain them in third countries had been labelled the Pacific Solution.

I am haunted by this epithet as it is resonates with sinister ‘solutions’ found elsewhere in the twentieth century in the name of national security and identity. The cover notes to David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s chilling account of events that “shattered many of the myths Australia has about itself and changed profoundly the way it is seen in the eyes of the world” summarize events concisely:

They put lives at risk. They twisted the law. They drew the military into the heart of an election campaign. They muzzled the press. They misused intelligence services, defied the United Nations, antagonized Indonesia and bribed poverty stricken Pacific states. They closed Australia to refugees – and won a mighty election victory.

At the time I was well into the second year of a diplomatic posting to Papua New Guinea (PNG). I worked for Australia’s overseas aid agency, AusAID. My career had involved me in human rights and refugee activities in several countries, including Southern African states on the front line against apartheid, Nepal, India and PNG. During my working life Australia had held out a helping hand to refugees from various conflicts, including Tibet, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. Now we were turning our back on Afghanis fleeing the most repressive and murderous regime to emerge out of the ruins of the Soviet invasion, the Taliban.

I traveled to Afghanistan in the early 1970s as part of a wave of adventurous backpackers criss-crossing the Middle East and South Asia during those halcyon years. A Russian military presence was evident in Kabul but the hell of military invasion was yet to unfold. Young Afghani students in western dress gathered in coffee shops, tourists mixed with locals in cheap eating houses and live music could be heard in the evenings, emanating from a myriad small guest houses and hotels.

Kabul was a welcoming, relaxed haven for travelers en route to exotic destinations in this ancient tribal fiefdom, and Iran or Pakistan. Later as a doctoral student in India I had the great fortune to form deep friendships with both Afghanis and Iranians. Some were escaping the strictures of the Khomeini regime in Iran and the terrors of war in Afghanistan. India provided a safe sanctuary and a place to study.

The brutalization of Afghanis and others under Australia’s refugee policies was not only an affront to ideals that drew me into the arena of overseas aid, but hurt at a more subtle emotional level as I projected what it would mean for my erstwhile friends.

The Tampa affair and the crushing reality of the punitive policies it spawned saw me withdraw iteratively from a state machine that was imprisoning refugees in desert gulags, endangering lives of desperate people at sea, engineering and re-engineering the Pacific Solution and the cruel regime of temporary protection visas.

I had been involved on the margins of the Pacific Solution in PNG but the crunch came in an ironic twist. On return from PNG I was thrust into the midst of a whole-of-government stratagem to punish refugees. As part of what I perceived to be an orchestrated marginalization process by senior managers, I was put in charge of aid to Nauru. This ill-begotten program was a bribe to a failed state to accept complicity in our politically motivated violation of the rights of the people dumped on Nauru. It ran contrary to the various manifestos of sustainable development and good governance we belaboured in our dealings with other Pacific states dependent on Australian aid.

By default I became a member of the Prime Minister’s task force on offshore asylum seekers or ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘boat people’, depending on the agenda of the day. The core business of this group of senior public service, police and defence assets was to construct, deconstruct and re-engineer the legal, logistical and administrative underpinnings of boat arrivals policy and to shape (spin) the official line for their political masters. Lawyers were central to the exercise to test and tweak the legal ramifications and inner workings of excising chunks of Australia from the migration zone.

The most extreme construct involved excision of the total Australian landmass from the migration zone. It would be ‘pythonesque’ if the consequences were not so tragic for the victims. I became a member of the Immigration Department’s coordination committee on the Nauru detention facilities, which regularly and perfunctorily discussed how to manage detainees who had self-harmed or adopted other forms of protest. It was a dehumanizing, soul-destroying experience."

This is a short excerpt from a memoir I have tried to pen on these unsavoury events.

ABC spruiks reactionary politics in the cause of 'balance'

2011-06-28T09:30:00.006+10:00

Sent the following comment to their ABC this morning:

"ABC24 Breakfast is at it again. Trioli was drooling over the prospect of Abbott becoming PM on the back of fear campaigns and some dunderhead Tea Party pollie entering the Presidential fray. Where in your charter does it say you should shape opinion on how people think about politics? You have players like Trioli and Clarke clearly spruiking for right wing reactionaries. I would be equally offended if they were spruiking for left wing ideologues.

There are too many opinionated flakes involved with shows on ABC24 under the guise of journalism. Breakfast and the Drum are inhabited by people trying to model themselves on commercial talk show participants, with a shallowness that is breathtakingly disappointing and it is seeping into your serious journalism.

Over time you will loose audience share because the 'concentration span of distracted gnats' crowd are'nt interested in politics and those with a brain will get their 'news' on-line. Many people are sick of the editorializing virus that is sweeping the ABC, seeking to shift opinion on the major issues of the day.

In your quest for so-called 'balance' some dreadful 'pamphleteers' get a regular airing, such as those from thoroughly compromised think tanks such as the IPA. No wonder the PM's polling is going south on matters of national importance such as carbon pricing. Their ABC is out there doing the reactionary's job for them!"

Poll Bludger comment a telling report card on Abbott's opposition!

2011-06-23T09:49:00.003+10:00

The following comment appeared this morning on the Poll Bludger blog. The author's pseudonym is Bushfire Bill. This deserves a wide readership:

"So I suppose today’s The Day, one year on.

We were supposed to have a plebiscite rolling the Coalition into government. According to the script, the government was sure to lose it and Tony Abbott would shame Gillard into resigning and calling an election.

A carefully crafted series of polls, internet stunts like The Cloud, articles on how Rudd was all but selecting wallpaper for the Lodge and K House and and endless, buzzing barrage of shock-jock insults and mockery were supposed to soften her up, ready for the kill.

Gee, it all looked so good on paper, didn’t it?

The fairy story, concocted through a manic News Ltd and an outright insane Coalition leadership, that Gillard was gone, fell apart under the weight of its own ridiculousness.

As proof of just how ridiculous it was, I offer you one compelling piece of logic: even Steve Fielding wouldn’t buy into it. When Fielding runs a mile, you know whatever it is he’s running from is truly frightening.

When Fonzie jumped the shark on a pair of water skis all those years ago it popped the bubble of suspended disbelief that so many fans would blow around them when they sat down to watch Happy Days. Suddenly they saw their favourite show for what it was… an over-egged fantasy world where everyone was nice, even the nasties. And it was getting tired.

This week I have the hope that the same has happened to the Coalition. They had their chance, nearly a year of relentless negativism designed to destabilize the hung parliament, and indeed the nation itself.

The only way they could get the punters on side with their wet dream of a guerrilla usurpation of the government was to convince the gullible out there that the country was so fu*ked that even Tony Abbott couldn’t bugger it up further. They set the bar so low that even the intellectually lame and the logically halt could jump it.

Some snippets…

Pensioners cowering in their homes, with only their AM radios and their telephones left to call 2GB for emergency assistance, in case the man came around to burn their house down with a free set-top-box.

A tinpot guano nation in the middle of the Pacific, smaller than the fullstop at the end of this sentence, held up as a stirring example of man’s humanity to man. It’s farcical government only functional enough to hold out its hand to take Australian aid dollars. Senior members of our “Alternative Government” went there to sit under the coconut tree and do a deal with this bastion of democracy, just as the Russian Mafia had done, in years past. Scott Morrison may find that the Malaysians are not as welcoming as our Micronesian welfare junkies in Nauru. Nauru may find that the Australian government is also not so welcoming to their next plea for a handout. I hope so.

The News Ltd publications running public campaigns to destroy the Greens, and then crying foul when Bob Brown ticked them off about it. They published poll after poll, one upon the other, designed to make polls themselves the story, vying with each other to show an even more dismal picture for Labor. When the matriarch of the Murdoch family finally cried “Enough!” on Climate Change, the bloated, malignant Akerman, fresh from providing ballast for an ocean-going yacht, sheepishly told a national TV audience and an incredulous Insiders panel that she was past it, too old and frail to make a rational decision. When there’s a new low to establish, you can always rely on Piers to step up to the plate.

Rational decisions weren’t out of bounds for only the aged. “Elites” were banned from participation too. If you had money, were an actress, or a scientist, perhaps even if you’d been to school sometime in your life, you were excised from society. If someone who knew someone you knew did a corrupt deal anywhere, you were disqualified from ever working for the government.

Mike Quigley’s distant connection with some of his employees’ antics in Costa Rica was enough to have him hauled before parliamentary committees and vilified in the Murdoch press for being – not quite a crook – but definitely a shady character. It never occurred to his inquisitors that if this was all you needed to do to be barred from senior office, they’d better start packing their own bags as well, especially the egregious Senator Abetz, friend and mentor to one Godwin Grech and not too distant descendant of a long line of obedient gauleiters.

There were so many more… a nation and employment-saving scheme that built much-needed school infrastructure turned into a debacle of almost biblical proportions. An insulation program that actually saved lives, turned into a murderous rort that was killing our youth. $900 cheques, the first measure of the emergency response to the GFC, vilified as recently as yesterday for putting money into the hands of the Bogans so they could buy a bigger plasma TV. Hello? I didn’t hear Gerry Harvey complaining when all this cash was splashed about, propping up his overpriced franchises. The re-emergence of Reith, the casually cold hearted warrior against working people, touted now as the new leader of the Liberal Party, back from Paris after sucking a million or two in salary off the government tit in an obscure sinecure. How appropriatement, Reithy. the concocted crisis of the Boat People, a drop in the ocean compared to the world refugee problem, in turn vilified and then succoured by an increasingly bizarre and smirking Morrison.

And finally we had the cherry on top, the culmination of it all: The Plebiscite. A scam that, whose decision, if ever taken, and if it went the wrong way, not even its originators and spruikers would abide by. Even Fielding, a sucker for every three card trick in the book, could see through that one. It took Steve six years minus 7 days to wake up, but there you go, miracles do happen. Maybe I’ll take up God.

The bubble has burst and the shark has been jumped. The urgers from the right leave in their wake a disaster: a nation divided, miserable, in a state of chronic ire over everything, and nothing. The ultra Right made the assessment that in order to save Australia they first had to destroy it. To have any chance of scrambling into government, they had to destroy faith in governance first. What they didn’t actually destroy they would write up as destroyed anyway. Same difference, really.

Constant negativity, the politicisation of two flies crawling up a wall, the turning of a once confident country into a national Reality TV show where petty jealousies, arrogant ungratefulness, constant barking from the sidelines and vacuous, unceasing harangues from overpaid shills telling us we should be miserable and angry… these all have consequences.

If I have a prayer, it’s that the next real calamity to hit us – be it GFC#2, or another season of mega-floods and Cat-5 cyclones – holds off for long enough to allow the nation to recover its lost spirit. We can’t take much more of this dumbing-down. We’re just about stunted-out.

Australia should turn off its TVs and its radios and simply open the window. They should look outside and see that the World hasn’t ended, that the nation isn’t in ruins, that a tumbleweed rolling down the street has more substance and meaning to it than a thousand Abbott brain-farts… that they’ve been conned, but that there’s still time to recover, if only they’ll open that window."

Amen to that...

Alert & alarmed: Trivia question: Where have we seen plebiscites used to circumvent parliamentary democracy?

2011-06-21T16:32:00.015+10:00

The Coalition were strong on precedents in Parliament today. There are some interesting precedents on the use of plebiscites to circumvent the decisions of a duly elected parliament. One jumped out at me....

"On July 14, 1933, Hitler’s “Law against the Establishment of Parties” marked the factual end of the party system and parliamentary democracy. On that same day, he passed the “Law on Plebiscites,” which allowed the Nazi regime to use strategically organised plebiscites to create the appearance of democratic decision-making."

The words "to create the appearance of democratic decision-making" resonate here. In our Parliament, governed by a minority government, a type of systematic sabotage of the democratic process has taken hold, where the conventional processes of the House of Representatives are debased daily by an attempt to censure the government and/or suspend the standing orders to enable Abbott and his mob to rant & rave about 'lack of legitimacy' and 'dishonest government'. They basically want to engineer a vote of no-confidence in the Government.

Now we have the spectacle of an Opposition leader attempting to subvert the Parliamentary process through a 'non-binding' plebiscite on the introduction of a price on carbon. Make no mistake, this is a further iteration of a power grab, pure and simple. The ultimate objective is to make the Parliament unworkable, undermine the government and bring on an early poll, which Abbott sees will install him in the Lodge. We do not live in a one-party state and yes, our democratic institutions are intact and strong, but the predilections of the current Coalition leadership are a tad troubling, don't you think?

Asylum seekers in Australia - time for Labor to change the tune, rather than play Abbott's whistle!

2011-06-20T10:52:00.005+10:00

Again, the wedge is in. Labor finds itself wedged between the fear of the 'yellow peril' bogey that conservative parties have trotted out successfully throughout our short history and the progressive left's advocacy for the universality of human rights. A cursory glance at the numbers of people who arrive in this country by boat in irregular circumstances - ie, less than half a per cent of those who seek asylum - is proof enough that this divisive issue has nothing to do with a genuine concern.

It is base politics, pure and simple. Are people escaping repressive fundamentalist regimes and violent upheaval today not worthy of our compassion? In his review of Caroline Moorehead's Human Cargo Mike Philips wrote,

"Perhaps the element which makes Moorehead's story so urgent and terrifying is her description of a history in which governments' perception of refugees altered with the end of the cold war, when the "good" refugees fleeing communism, suddenly transformed into "bad" refugees threatening our civilisation. In fact, the vast bulk of refugees remain in their own region, or are accommodated in the world's poorest countries, which are least able to carry the burden.

Australia provides the most extreme example of a state's anxiety to barricade its borders by its policy of stopping boats on the high seas and dumping refugees on its poorer neighbours. Imprisoned behind razor wire, Australia's asylum-seekers protested by sewing their lips together, an act of self mutilation reflecting the desperation to which they had been driven by their treatment."

We are seeing this scenario play out again. Labor is scurrying to find a regional approach that stops boats but does'nt breach the UN convention on treatment of refugees. It will not adopt the full Pacific Solution, but in the eyes of human rights advocates it is failing to meet its progressive charter in this area. The mandatory detention regime opened a Pandora's box of opportunities for low rent political agendas, which politicians like Howard and Abbott have exploited ruthlessly. Labor is continually playing catch up, rather than biting the bullet by re-examining the rationale for long-term mandatory detention and changing the tenor of the whole debate. Leadership requires courage to take the steps to change opinion through education and cogent debate.

Where does the so-called media intelligentsia stand on the current state of play in the human rights battles? Wishy washy as usual methinks. The unedifying sight of Labor politicians jumping on the xenophobia bandwagon has human rights advocates aghast as they see defenceless people used as betting chips in a nasty bidding war. Unmitigated acts of bastardry continue unabated, leaving desperate people with little choice but to self-harm or cry out through extreme acts.

Abbott knows he is on a winner with large slices of the electorate, accustomed to his brand of political correctness - its ok to be afraid of refugees and to treat them like social pariahs, but 'don't worry about that while I'm around!'. This was the Howard credo, honed so well after Tampa. Get the troops out to bash Labor on every issue that panders to our darkest fears. Set up the straw dog to fear, find someone or some group to blame & punish and then put yourself forward as the saviour of the day. The security man who sells you razor wire to keep out pygmy possums, and if they still get in, rounds them up and trains them to do your every bidding. Its always easy when the group you are hounding are defenseless, vulnerable and scared of being kicked back over the fence.

Way to go Abbott. Something you and your following can be very proud of.

Message to Labor - time to change tack in tackling this wedge!

Open letter to Tony Abbott, Leader of the Coalition

2011-06-15T10:26:00.000+10:00

You come from a party that has fostered some notable statesmen and public intellectuals.

You are doing this country a great disservice by framing the issues of comprehensive action on climate change, decency toward asylum seekers and a fair distribution of mining wealth as left wing political agendas. I know you are desperate to achieve power but be assured your tactics on these issues will damage the body politic of our country. You pander to tendencies in this country that stem from ignorance, fear and isolation.

It is the duty of elected officials to act as trustees of the nation; to be custodians of power bequeathed to make decisions in our national interest. Highly educated people have a similar duty in my view. And yet, you are determined to pitch everything you do and say at the lowest common denominator to garner electoral support.

Your conscience does not seem to trouble you one bit, as you hold this country back from becoming a beacon of reason and humanity in a global maelstrom. It is a shame that you cannot rise above your petty ambitions to do something noble, and offer bi-partisanship in areas that are vital for social justice and harmony

You met with the Dalai Lama. You would be wise to study his words carefully for therein lies wisdom and a way forward for humanity.

Abbott's very own Devil's Island - for the protection of asylum seekers!

2011-06-11T10:23:00.008+10:00

My interest in asylum seeker issues gathered pace as Director of the aid program put in place to leverage Nauru’s part in the policy to keep boat people outside Australia’s immigration zone, otherwise known as the ‘pacific solution’.

From a paltry few scholarships per annum, post Tampa the Australian taxpayers footed a huge bill to keep Nauru on side. Nauru was lurching toward becoming a failed state prior to the AusAID and Immigration funding that formed the ongoing ‘bribe’ to keep the detention camps open on Nauru. The treatment of asylum seekers detained on this benighted speck of guano was done in our name, paid for by our taxes.

In his statement on behalf of the Human Rights Council of Australia to the 61st Session, UN Commission on Human Rights, April 2005, Howard Glenn, Executive Director, Rights Australia, had this to say

“On the Pacific Island of Nauru, a State which like Australia, has acceded to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there are six children whose situation is instructive. With their parents, they left Afghanistan and tried to reach refuge in Australia by boat. They were picked up by the Australian Navy in late 2001 before reaching Australia, and have spent their lives since in detention. These children have been in detention now since 2001, as part of the Australian Government’s “Pacific Solution”, a program to deter others from seeking asylum in Australia.

The three girls are now aged 14, 8 and 7; the boys are 15 and 9, and a third boy was born in detention and is two years of age. The children are amongst the last 54 of 1200 people who were detained on Nauru, in the detention camp established following the interception of the Norwegian ship, Tampa. Remaining with the children are 4 women and 44 men.

According to reports from the camp, the children are all lonely and have found it difficult to watch all the other children leaving to begin new lives. They have no friends left to play with. They of course don't understand http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwhy they have been left behind. The parents are traumatised and find it difficult to cope with parenting in that situation. They are in a camp full of depressed people…."

Welcome to Tony Abbott's very own Devil's Island.

Asylum seekers in Australia - Lies, lies and more lies in Pacific Solution gambit

2011-06-09T11:45:00.003+10:00

Susan Metcalfe nails the lie at the heart of Abbott's gambit to reintroduce the Pacific Solution and TPVs to the asylum seekers landscape in Australia. An excerpt from her article in today's Age follows:

"This week, the UNHCR made its position clear on the past Nauru policy, as it has many times before: ''The Pacific Solution, including the use of Nauru, was a deeply problematic policy, both as a matter of principle and for those refugees and asylum seekers affected by it.''

In spite of this, Liberal senator Simon Birmingham said on Sky News that the detention centre on Nauru had been ''overseen and approved'' by the UNHCR, and the Nauruan government continues to claim that the camps operated ''under the auspices of UNHCR''.

A UNHCR spokesman said: ''UNHCR was not involved and, indeed, distanced itself from any role in overseeing or managing the processing facilities on Nauru under the Pacific Solution. Recent media reports that the centre on Nauru was approved by and run under the auspices of the UN are factually incorrect.''

Nauru is a country with a record that doesn't match the governance expectations of most Australians."

This country was sold a dud by Howard when his government set up the Nauru facilities. I have posted many messages on the miscasting of aid to Nauru and elsewhere under the PS and the alarming 'somnambulism' of the Australian people as these events unfolded. I have been critical of Australia's fourth estate for largely failing to expose and condemn Howard's approach to refugee rights. The profound negative implications of the Howard experiment for the health of Australia's body politic will be the subject of much reflection in the coming years.

We see the profound negative implications continuing to play out in the Coalition's shoddy posturing on asylum seekers. Along the way Australian officialdom has bribed, bullied and coerced a desperate failing state in a cynical, mercenary gambit to host our offshore detention facilities, without the slightest interest in a regional solution or one that actually improved the plight of refugees. At least the Labor Govt is trying to operate within a regional framework that engages all the interested parties. The Coalition are not interested in a regional solution but only seek to wedge the Government politically.

A further iteration of the ABC complaints saga - I have turned off but others may still have some arrows in the quiver!

2011-06-02T19:49:00.001+10:00

I received a further reply to my complaint of political bias on 7.30 and ABCNews24. It went like this from Kieran Doyle of ABC's Audience and Consumer Affairs area:

"Thank you for your email.

Should you wish to substantiate your claims regarding the manner in which ALP and Greens members are interviewed on the program, or the contributions of what you refer to as “extreme right commentators”, we will be happy to investigate any specific examples you are able to identify and will provide you with a considered response. Please include the time and date of the specific broadcasts that concerned you.

Your comments are noted."

My reply follows:

"I appreciate it is difficult to respond to these complaints. However, the trend I identify is real and of great concern. I published my complaints and your reply on a couple of national political bogs. I got strong support from their readership. Uhlmann has been a disaster for the ratings of 7.30. Reasonable viewers are deserting in droves. It was once compulsory viewing for politics tragics like myself but now it is unwatchable. It would be difficult to provide specific examples in future as I have simply turned off.

The same can be said for News24, which is dominated by journalists such as Melissa Clarke, Virginia Trioli, et al, who wear their political predilections on their sleeve. Trioli rudely demands accountability from Ministers, as if they are some how answerable to her, and treats politicians she likes as if they were cousins. We get enough of that biased claptrap from shock jocks and the great majority of the Murdoch press. Poor fella my country....

However, I will put your reply on the political blogs as there may be others still watching."

Over to you bloggers and other miscreants.

The ABC rejects criticism of political bias and as usual purports to be purer than the driven snow, but some of us know better!

2011-05-28T11:32:00.005+10:00

I recently complained to the ABC about an interview between Chris Uhlmann and Abbott on the 7.30 show. It had Uhlmann popping up in Alice Springs to hear Abbott sermonize on the failings of the Govt (quelle surprise). My complaint went like this:

"I have commented on this problem previously. Tonight you featured an interview between Chis Uhlmann and Abbott, who is busily constructing political wedges to further his power grabbing agenda. The PM has just completed a successful trip to North Asia, which achieved considerable advances in our relations with each of the countries visited. Rather than focus on this important visit, we were regaled with a glad handled interview with Abbott roaming around remote communities pushing his fear campaign on the carbon tax and pushing an agenda on Aboriginal welfare that is hypocritical in the extreme. It came across as a political infomercial. I'm heartily sick of this overt bias and will take my complaint to the relevant Minister if this program cannot return to a balanced approach under your charter. Uhlman has been a serial offender in this regard and Sales is lightweight. Her interview with Lindsay Tanner was an opportunity lost and merely confirmed his take on a dumbing down of our media culture and a news analysis cycle pandering to people with little grasp of public policy processes & short concentration spans. It is demeaning our democracy and treating your audience with scant respect."

I received the following reply from ABC Corporate Affairs:

"Your concerns have been investigated by Audience and Consumer Affairs, a unit which is separate to and independent of program making areas within the ABC. We have reviewed the broadcasts, assessed them against the ABC’s editorial standards and sought and considered material provided by ABC News.

7.30 reported on both the Prime Minister’s visit to Asia and Mr Abbott’s trip to the Northern Territory. Both are highly newsworthy and both were adequately covered by the program.

Having reviewed the interview with Mr Abbott, we have not been able to identify a single instance where he was “glad handled” or any sense at all that the interview amounted to an “infomercial”.

Audience and Consumer Affairs has concluded that the interview is in keeping with section 4.1 and 4.3 of the ABC Editorial Policies. The questions put to Mr Abbott were based on news value and are matters of public interest. We believe the interview was suitably rigorous and questioning and Mr Abbott was afforded ample opportunity to state his views in response."

I have replied as follows:

"As with my previous complaints this has been handled with typical bureaucratic dissembling. The fact that Uhlmann was shadowing Abbott on his outback venture was proof enough of glad handling. Last time I looked we were not in an election campaign, although it is difficult to believe with the constant fawning after this Opposition leader. It may be the fact of a minority Govt that has the media in a constant frenzy of expectation but it is demeaning our body politic.

A myth has emerged that Abbott 'cuts through' and the Govt is weak and poor at communication. I suggest this is a media construct fueled by journalists such as Uhlmann. He aggressively interrupts Labor and Green politicians but will let Abbott get away with his self-serving line of hyperbole on the carbon tax, asylum seekers and the welfare of our first citizens. Why was 7.30 trailing after one of the most mediocre intellects to strut the political stage in several decades on a trip to nowhere in public policy terms?

Believe me, I am not Robinson Crusoe when it comes to negative perceptions of the ABC's handling of the political cut and thrust. The constant airing on ABC 24 of nonsense from extreme right commentators from organizations like the IPA is evidence enough of a nod toward extremist positions on the economy and society. The IPA is a voice for powerful groups that wish to shape our body politic to serve their commercial interests and was misnamed. It should have been called the 'Institute of Private Affairs'. Why are its spokespersons treated as if they were objective journalists?

Your news boards invariably are headed by stories highlighting the Coalition's constant fear mongering on the carbon tax and asylum seekers and personal attacks on the PM and her frontbenchers. Some of your political journos on ABC24 (for example Melissa Clarke), positively drool when the Govt is attacked for some confected shortcoming. On the more enlightened political blogs the ABC is now oft referred to as 'their ABC' - this is a sad state of affairs and reflects poorly on your performance as the national broadcaster. A quick glance at the legislative record of this Parliament should dispel any notions of a poorly performing Govt. It is about time your political commentators reflected reality and not the leadership fantasies of the Opposition."

Nuff said.

Coalition calls for a parliamentary inquiry into asylum seeker detention, when what was needed was a Royal Commission into the Pacific Solution

2011-05-23T09:21:00.005+10:00

Those with any compassion for the plight of asylum seekers will be choking on their breakfast cereals, listening to Morrison bang on about the need for a Parliamentary inquiry into asylum seekers detention.

The treatment of asylum seekers is made worse by a constant beating of a fear drum by the Coalition and a conga line of media supporters that are busy constructing another political wedge on this issue.

If Abbott is elected the Pacific Solution and TPVs will be reinstated and we will be back to square one. Christmas Island was commissioned by the Howard Govt in response to the unsustainable expense of the Pacific Solution.

Where was the media support for an inquiry into the abuses at the heart of the Pacific Solution? Where was the media (apart from some brave souls in the Fairfax media) when the appalling violations under the Pacific Solution were bringing the human rights record of this country into the gutter?

I have posted many messages on the miscasting of aid to Nauru and elsewhere under the Pacific Solution and the alarming 'somnambulism' of the Australian people as these events unfolded. I have been critical of Australia's fourth estate for largely failing to expose and condemn the Howard Govt's approach to human rights. I had hoped the profound negative implications of the Howard experiment for the health of Australia's body politic would be the subject of much reflection in the coming years.

The tawdry misuse of official aid under the Pacific Solution and the downstream implications of the strategy, which was made up on the run by bureaucrats trying to engineer good outcomes from bad motives, have not been subjected to judicial inquiry. My published condemnation of aid to Nauru as "‘an unmitigated bribe’ to ensure the Pacific Solution continued" should have been subject to inquiry.

This blog called repeatedly for a Royal Commission into the immigration policies and programs of the Howard Govt.

It was necessary for the Labor government to investigate this dark chapter. My oft repeated call for such an inquiry to shine a light into the dark recesses of the Pacific Solution pork barrel was ignored. Now the chickens are coming home to roost for Labor. They should have exposed the whole grubby affair to bright light to put to rest any credibility the Coalition would have on this subject for at least a decade, and to provide an opportunity for a sensible public debate on this sensitive area of public policy.

I proposed a Royal Commission with Terms of Reference to include, but not be limited to, an investigation of:

1. implementation of the Pacific Solution (this of course should encompass the role and use of official aid)

2. wrongful detention of refugees and permanent residents of Australia

3. operation and financing of detention facilities on the mainland and offshore

4. wrongful repatriation of asylum seekers

5. influence of political staffers and Ministers in the determination of immigration decisions

6. role of the Prime Minister's task force on 'illegal' migration

7. influence of 'understandings' and 'deals' with neighbouring countries on the management of Australia's refugee policies and programs

Abbott to outline broad vision for Australia - gulp!

2011-05-12T11:16:00.000+10:00

Abbott's broad vision for Australia:

1. Punish asylum seekers by sending them to fly speck, Nauru, and putting genuine refugees on TPVs to punish them some more

2. Do not put a price on carbon

3. Send welfare recipients to latter day salt mines for character building

4. Do a lot of long bike rides to avoid family and work responsibilities

5. Punish some more asylum seekers

6. Give miners, polluters and media moguls tax free status

7. Divert huge amounts of govt revenue to people on $200,000 or more per annum as gesture of solidarity

8. Divert huge amounts of annual aid budget to Nauru to keep Nauruans sweet

9. Trash regional approaches to asylum seekers as we will decide who comes here and the manner in which they come (preferably by Qantas)

10. Punish some more asylum seekers, just to keep the dog whistle in tune

Asylum seekers in Australia - Ken Parish writing for Club Troppo - In Praise of Gillard’s Malaysia Solution

2011-05-11T10:47:00.002+10:00

This article in Club Troppo caught my attention today. It is a well reasoned piece which strikes a chord with me:

"It’s hard to deny that the Gillard government’s emerging asylum seeker policy represents a thinly disguised reversion to Howard’s Pacific Solution, although both Gillard and Stephen Smith are giving denial a good shot. The thing is that I suspect most “punters” will neither know nor care as long as it looks tough and stops the boats (as I’m pretty sure it will after a lag as those already in the people smuggler pipeline arrive). With the noteworthy addition of the Malaysia element, Gillard’s solution looks (and is) sufficiently different from Howard’s recipe as to avoid an appearance of craven political capitulation.

The Malaysia element adds a critical dimension to the visaless asylum seeker issue that Howard’s policy conspicuously lacked. As I’ve observed previously, Howard ultimately had no choice but to grant visas to asylum seekers on Nauru who were assessed as genuine refugees, because other countries simply weren’t prepared to take them (apart from a one-off initial deal with New Zealand). Howard’s “we will decide who comes here …” statement was a hollow, meaningless threat. Indeed so desperate was Howard to disguise this fatal flaw in his policy towards the end of his term of office that he entered negotiations with the US to swap Australian refugees on Nauru for American ones interned at Guantanamo Bay. Had that deal been finalised it would have borne a close similarity with the deal Gillard has now done in principle with Malaysia, a point Tony Abbott has so far managed to avoid mentioning. However Gillard’s gambit is manifestly superior at least from a border security viewpoint. Giving US residency visas instead of Australian ones to asylum seekers found to be refugees would hardly have sent a powerful deterrent message to those contemplating signing up with the people smugglers whereas sending them to the back of the “queue” in Malaysia most certainly does. If Tony Abbott were to experience one of his increasingly infrequent moments of disarming honesty, he would admit that Gillard’s Malaysia gambit is a policy masterstroke which a Coalition government would have adopted like a shot and proudly claimed credit for had it been currently in office.

The Malaysia element is predictably being assailed from both Right and Left. Abbott is trying to gain mileage and negate any kudos for Gillard by painting the deal as a negotiating loss for Australia because we are to take 5 UNHCR-approved refugees from Malaysia for every unprocessed boat person we return to them. However the reality is that Australia will almost certainly gain a huge border security win by stopping the boats, which is what Abbott has until now professed was his aim, while taking in return just 1000 extra approved refugees from offshore each year in a total migration program of around 170,000 is just a drop in the ocean and hardly a concession at all, especially if it eventually allows Christmas Island and other onshore detention centres to be closed.

The Malaysia element is also being criticised as a desperate and expedient “one-off” solution. But that was equally true of the Pacific Solution when first propounded. By definition all such policies are expedient reactions to immediate border security crises. Moreover, one would suspect that it will prove possible in due course to negotiate an extension of the deal with Malaysia, as long as it doesn’t result in significant adverse domestic political blowback for its government or serve as an attractant for an increased flow of hopeful asylum seekers into Malaysia. No doubt those concerns account for the initial limited scope of the deal. It may even prove feasible to negotiate similar deals with countries like India and Indonesia.

Criticism from the Left has focused on the fact that Malaysia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and has a poor record of treatment of the 90,000 or so asylum seekers within its borders (note the contrast with the tiny numbers Australians are whinging about having to cope with). However UNHCR is cautiously welcoming of the deal and apparently regards the undertakings of “non-refouler” and humane treatment that Australia has extracted from Malaysia as appropriate. The Refugee Convention does not forbid return of asylum seekers to non-signatory nations, it forbids “refouler” of refugees to their homeland or another place where they may face persecution. What will be required here is a credible regime of oversight of Malaysia’s treatment of returnees by UNHCR and Australian authorities. As long as that occurs, objecting to returning people from whence they transited in Malaysia in favour of taking a greater number of assessed genuine refugees from there just doesn’t make much sense except perhaps to woolly-minded Greens voters. However much the asylum seeker lobby may shrilly assert to the contrary, there IS a queue in Malaysia and Indonesia, albeit a very long and uncertain one. Asylum seekers can be assessed for refugee status by UNHCR and are able to apply offshore for an Australian humanitarian visa. Why should we not choose to assist both ourselves and our poorer regional neighbours by taking more of those who choose to remain in that long, uncertain queue and less of those who take the law into their own hands to gain visa priority by subjecting their families to an extraordinarily dangerous boat voyage, and in the process place serious (if disproportionate) pressures of community resentment on Australia’s extraordinarily successful non-discriminatory migration program?

PS Incidentally, the Gillard government’s emerging policy, if successful, might even provide a plausible basis for a sustainable reshaped international burden-sharing approach to refugee policy advocated by leading refugee law experts like James Hathaway and others. In return for being relieved of the obligation to accept ad hoc visaless boat people who arrive on their shores, countries with a significant migration program like Australia would agree to accept a greater number of refugees objectively assessed to be in need of permanent protection outside their homeland, while a much wider range of wealthy nations would shoulder the financial burden of assisting poorer countries of “first asylum” to accommodate those needing only temporary protection until conditions in their homelands improved."

I have commented on this article as follows:

"Thank you for this article. It is a well balanced analysis of the realities confronting the Gillard Govt. I have lately quoted Susan Metcalfe’s article in The Age, which cites me as a source for a critique of the Pacific Solution into which I became embroiled as an AusAID official. It is by no means a solution but it is a significant advance on the scenario projected by Abbott, which will be a return to a policy that has rights violations as its centerpiece. It is vital that people smuggling is disrupted, and it is equally vital that countries within the Bali process cooperate to address smuggling and refugee processing within a regional framework. The Pacific Solution did not provide a basis for a regional approach, but was characterized by a series of fairly tacky bilateral deals."

Asylum seekers in Australia: Susan Metcalfe - Age article - "Compassion goes overboard"

2011-05-09T11:03:00.004+10:00

Following is today's article by Susan Metcalfe, author of The Pacific Solution, published in The Age. Ms Metcalfe quotes yours truly on the handling of the Pacific Solution by the Howard Govt.:

"How does dumping asylum seekers in PNG differ from Howard's Pacific Solution?

JULIA Gillard's announcement that Australia will forcibly return asylum seekers to Malaysia, and intends to re-establish a detention centre in Papua New Guinea, shows she is willing to compromise on the protection of vulnerable people when it suits her political agenda.

Malaysia is known for its harsh treatment of refugees. And we need only look at recent history to see what can happen in PNG.

Back in 2002, two pregnant women held behind the fences of Australia's PNG detention centre became so depressed that they ''verbally expressed their desire to abort their pregnancies''. Nine years later, as the Gillard government lobbies PNG to reopen the centre, it is worth remembering why the camp was such a bad idea in the first place.

When the Lombrum naval base in PNG's Manus province last housed Australia's asylum seekers, Australian taxpayers and Australian media were denied access. But in 2002 a number of journalists snuck into the country and talked to locals who gave witness accounts of detainees trying to escape over fences, of others who had deliberately cut themselves and of one man who tried to electrocute himself.

After just a few months, the International Organisation for Migration, which ran the camp, reported a prevalence of reactive psychoses, paranoid conditions and increasingly frequent confusional states among detainees. Problems of linguistic and social isolation, along with ''feelings of insecurity towards the local population'', were suggested as possible causes. Many were suffering from ''sleep disturbances, recurrent nightmares, chronic feelings of anxiety and depression, impaired memory and concentration, fatigue and lack of energy''.

One group of detainees transferred from PNG to Nauru in late 2002 was described by a psychiatrist as a ''special group at risk in the asylum seeker community''. Their symptoms included: lost hope in the future, nightmares of being captured by security forces in Iraq or drowning, short-term memory loss, constant ruminating or worrying, feeling abandoned and degraded and questioning if they were still human.

But although their detention had been difficult in PNG, many found the conditions in Nauru even harsher. One man said: ''It was very, very hard when we got to Nauru … In Nauru some people cut themselves, tried to hang themselves, jump from trees. That was the same in PNG, people broke down fences, lots of PNG army would come and tell them to go back inside the camp.''

In early 2002 a medical officer reported ''a level of complacency'' in protecting the camp population from the deadly plasmodium falciparum malaria and warned that ''the presence of a non-immune population in a high-risk endemic area must always be considered a dangerous combination''.

The International Organisation for Migration recommended to Australia's Immigration Department that the pregnant women and infants who were unable to take preventative medication should be transferred out of the area. But records show that the first transfers from PNG took place more than three months after the request was made. Numerous cases of malaria continued to be diagnosed throughout the life of the camp. One IOM report notes the case of an eight-year-old girl with ''malaria in relapse complicated with severe [urinary tract infection]''.

In 2002, Mark Thomson, who was involved in implementing Australia's Pacific Solution aid program, was asked to search for activities that AUSaid could support ''as a way of oiling the wheels of the Manus provincial government through small community-based aid projects''. Thomson describes the approach taken by the Australian government as ''under the table and pretty tacky''. He recently wrote that his experience with the Pacific Solution was ''the most corrosive'' of his career.

Thomson believes any return to the use of political agendas to shape Australia's aid policies would be disastrous.

Julia Gillard has assured us that a centre in PNG would not represent a return to the Pacific Solution. But if reopening the previously used centre is now being discussed and development aid is being offered in return, as the PNG government says it is, exactly how does this differ from past practice and policy?

We were told that the detention centre in PNG would remain closed. That promise should be honoured."

Australia accused of misleading UN on mandatory detention and Govt allegedly reprising Pacific Solution - the ghosts of Christmasses past !

2011-05-06T09:53:00.006+10:00

It is a bad news day when the ALP finds itself backed into such a corner that it reprises the excesses of Howard's Pacific Solution. It is reported we are also dissembling before UN bodies tasked with monitoring human rights violations, which is also out of the Howard/Downer/Ruddock game book.

I was involved in the aid component of the Pacific Solution and it was the most corrosive experience of my career. I recently commented on an article by Robert Manne, who has advocated Manus Island be revisited as an offshore detention facility, as follows:

" I was involved in the first wave of the Pacific Solution, which offered aid 'incentives' to GoPNG to re-activate the military base at Manus as a detention centre.

I visited said centre and was tasked to explore Manus Island for community based activities in health & education that AusAID could support as a way of oiling the wheels of the Provincial Govt. Aid to these areas had not been considered until the centre opened. The whole approach was under the table and pretty tacky. I was far from comfortable with the strategy.

There were other sleights of hand in terms of expenditures kept off the books of costs that were facility-related. The aging facility is by the water, with a respectable mess for support staff and visitors, with conditions for the asylum seekers marginal at best in an extremely hot & humid place.

Manus is a relatively poor province of PNG, with high levels of youth unemployment. Doubtless the centre will be refurbished and substantial resources will be applied to its operation. This in itself can cause problems with surrounding peoples who are somewhat disadvantaged."

The Manus component of the Pacific Solution was marginally better than Nauru because the PNG Government is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, but the same issues that saw East Timor reject the concept of housing a regional detention facility also apply to Manus. The detainees will be housed in tiny 'dongas' and fed in open mess facilities. The place is hot, humid and malaria prone. It is a debilitating situation behind wire - why do we insist on treating people with claims to refugee status like prisoners of war?

Amongst the dross of daily polls, mindless media stunts and gotcha moments Lyndsay Tanner nails the question - what is wrong with our political media?

2011-05-02T10:11:00.006+10:00

Crikey reports "former Finance Minister and Labor veteran Lindsay Tanner, who left politics at the last election, has written a scathing critique of modern political journalism and political practice Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy.

It takes aim at the Press Gallery, media companies, politicians and even voters themselves in a discussion of why the media and politicians seem caught up in a cycle of trivialization and spin."

Having bagged Bernard Keane in my last post for being a little too excitable in his critique of the ALP, here he is talking to Tanner about his book.

I have been banging on about the failings of our benighted media culture forever on this blog. Beacons of journalistic light do exist and occasionally pierce the lumpen gloom that covers the land. Commentary on asylum seekers and the carbon tax are the best examples. Abbott spruiks his fear nonsense in various outposts, honing his various wedge items, and gets glad handled at every turn by a bunch of mealy mouthed journalists who might have once had some integrity, but parked it somewhere and lost it, or are so young they never came to grips with the concept. Some brave souls in the Fairfax and public broadcasting stables tackle the issues head on, but they are drowned out by populist slogans and fear drums.

Abbott is a political shock-jock who thrives in a media landscape hungry for sound bites and cunning stunts, but is this what we need in a leader? The Rudd tactic worked for a while but his media manipulation was exposed as a cynical attempt to ride the beast, and it ultimately came unstuck. Let's hope the Abbott hoo ha is exposed well before he gets his budgie smugglers and lycra tights in the Lodge laundry basket.

Feedback to Crikey, one of the few truly independent media voices left in Australia.

2011-04-30T11:25:00.003+10:00

I have been asked how I'm finding my Crikey news subscription. I think Crikey is a breath of fresh air in a media landscape dumbed down by simple minded sound bites and 'gotcha' moments and traduced by political bias. My only complaint is a tendency at times to fall in with the group think of political journalists, who have pointed the bone at this Labor Government:

"I greatly enjoy your news analysis venture. My only criticism is the relentless bagging of the Govt by your political correspondent, Bernard Keane. It is bad enough we have to put up with the constant propagandizing of News Ltd outlets and many other MSM carriers on behalf of the Coalition. A largely ill-informed electorate swallow the sound bites and media grabs of this shoddy bunch and are conned into believing their life-styles are under threat by a carbon tax. BK's constant banging on about Labor's shortcomings may satisfy his political predilections, but Labor is opposed at every turn by a media campaign to deliver power to Abbott. The purveyors paint a picture of disunity, betrayal of the body politic, a 'stab in the back' for decent citizens by a government beholden to 'special interests' and unspecified 'elites'. More coded dog whistling to convince the electorate that their government is weak and incapable of protecting the country from outside threats and the export of jobs. Our PM is branded a liar, wooden, childless and weak. Actually, I think she is making a pretty good fist of the job and is a quick learner.

It is difficult to counter the constant barrage of negativity hurled at her by Abbott and his conga line of media buddies, including within the ABC, and she has been forced to adopt hard-line stances on refugees and several social policy fronts to blunt the extreme campaign of Abbott. The body politic has drifted to the right as a result of the Howard years and it is difficult for Labor to differentiate a progressive identity while hanging on to middle ground voters preoccupied with bread and butter issues and inundated with simple-minded political sound bites from every quarter. Crikey, give her a go.. "

Robert Manne on a solution to boat arrivals - in the absence of compassion in Australia let's revisit Manus Island!

2011-04-12T23:38:00.006+10:00

Robert Manne has reworked an earlier lecture in a piece on ABC's Unleashed today. Whilst I agree with his humanist assertions on an ideal approach to refugees arriving by boat, I question the logic of a reprise of the Manus Island facility in PNG. I made a few forays into the commentary area, as follows:

"I agree wholeheartedly with your first point re asylum seekers in the community. I was involved in the first wave of the Pacific Solution, which offered aid 'incentives' to GoPNG to re-activate the military base at Manus as a detention centre.

I visited said centre and was tasked to explore Manus Island for community based activities in health & education that AusAID could support as a way of oiling the wheels of the Provincial Govt. Aid to these areas had not been considered until the centre opened. The whole approach was under the table and pretty tacky. I was far from comfortable with the strategy.

There were other sleights of hand in terms of expenditures kept off the books of costs that were facility-related. The aging facility is by the water, with a mess for support staff and visitors, with conditions for the asylum seekers marginal at best in an extremely hot & humid place.

Manus is a relatively poor province of PNG, with high levels of youth unemployment. Doubtless the centre will be refurbished and substantial resources will be applied to its operation. This in itself can cause problems with surrounding peoples who are somewhat disadvantaged."

"I cannot believe the sanguine commentary here on the success of Nauru and TPVs. The great majority of detainees on Nauru were genuine refugees who now live in Australia and NZ. Our government spent a lot of treasure making that miracle work. People were persecuted without any foundation whatsoever. In the knowledge that the Pacific Solution was an expensive unsustainable dud, particularly given the parlous state of Nauru, the Howard govt. commissioned Christmas Island, which has turned out to be an even bigger dud. Refugees on TPVs lived a twilight existence of uncertainty and fear that they would be returned forcefully to their home countries. It was another form of mindless punishment of innocent human beings.

Refugee advocates rightly highlighted the bloody mindedness of this Catch 22 scenario hatched by Howard and chums. I had never seen a government so practiced in the art of pettiness. I managed the aid component of the Nauru solution; I was on the detention facility coordinating committee and Howard’s task force on ‘illegal arrivals’. I know of what I speak and my role in that cruel fiasco stirred me to examine Australia's performance in the arena of human rights.

What happened to that freedom loving social democracy built on universal human rights; a nation at ease with itself and welcoming to those who face persecution on political, religious or ethnicity grounds? Never existed, right?

We are in fact an uncompassionate society ready to disbelieve the legitimate claims of asylum seekers who didn’t stand in a non-existent queue of orderly people waiting for whichever repressive regime they are escaping to allow them to migrate. The silliness of this position overwhelms me at times.

Thankfully a good many decent Australians refuse to bow down to a majority opinion that tolerates human rights abuses.

I am reminded of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

"It is a superstition and ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority. Many examples can be given in which acts of majorities will be found to have been wrong and those of minorities to have been right. All reforms owe their origin to the initiation of minorities in opposition to majorities...So long as the superstition that men should obey unjust laws exists, so long will their slavery exist.""

"If you take the combined figure for PNG & Nauru I believe over 1,600 people were detained. Some 1,200 were settled in Australia and NZ as refugees. To our shame, NZ took a proportionally higher number when capacity and relative resources are considered. Some 480 returned to their source countries, many of whom took a measly DIMIA bribe to get out of the hell hole of detention. We now know many of those found themselves in harm's way yet again (see David Corlett's "Following Them Home").

As Susan Metcalf points out in her book on the Pacific Solution, Oxfam and A Just Australia estimate the cost (of the Pacific Solution) at more than $1 billion, with the $390m construction of the Christmas Island facility included in this figure. The long-term damage done to the human beings involved and to Australia cannot be calculated".

I can confirm that many of us who worked on the aid component of the PS invariably suffered deep anxiety & depression as a result. Public assets were misused to enable a ruthless politician to drive a wedge that won an election (arguably two elections) and that is still demeaning our body politic.

What does it say about the health of our democracy in the 21st century when a major political party has as the centrepiece of its election platform the punishment of refugees that arrive by boat? It is frankly disgusting."

Abbott's carbon tax strategy to win govt at the cost of the national interest

2011-04-09T10:40:00.008+10:00

Abbott and his conga line of media cronies are continuing the thinly camouflaged campaign to win government by trashing any attempt to put a price on carbon. In the process our national interest is being subverted for political gain. The science on climate change is routinely questioned and vilified by skilled dog whistlers and commentators compromised by their links to vested interests opposed to carbon pricing. A largely ill-informed electorate swallow the sound bites and media grabs of this shoddy bunch and are conned into believing their life-styles are under threat. The test of sound leadership is knowing when to sublimate the desire for power in the national interest. Throughout history great leaders have offered bi-partisanship in the face of national challenges. What do we get here? Abbott pretends to care about the little people while doing the bidding of the mining and power companies. He pitches a different message to different audiences, depending on their relative levels of literacy - in the case of the recent rally outside Parliament three word slogans were more than enough. Demagogues always operate like this - it is in their DNA to tailor the message to suit the crowd and they are gifted at pressing the right fear buttons with confected outrage and anger. Sound familiar?

Lenore Taylor is one of the better journalists following the carbon pricing debate. In her latest piece she writes:

"...The political genius of Abbott's campaign is to focus all that anxiety, all the anger about all the existing price pressures, on to the carbon price which has not even happened yet. Coalition strategists are absolutely blunt about it. ''We are going to blame the carbon price for absolutely everything,'' they say."

If its not scaring people over asylum seekers its scaring them about phantom cost of living increases. Abbott is a fear monger-er of the worst sort. We have seen his type of politician down through the ages. They set up straw men to knock down and claim the credit for 'saving' the people from some imaginary onslaught. Coalition supporters have used asylum seekers and certain 'types' of migrants to raise the spectre of threats to personal security and standards of living & public services, lower land & property values. Instead of joining with the government to develop a bipartisan approach to immigration and the ongoing challenge of irregular arrivals by asylum seekers, we get a shrill pitch to fear and division. Ring a bell? Well it bloody well should. Carbon pricing is the next bogey man to be misused by this reactionary campaign to grab power.

Another plank of the strategy is to demonize the Labor leadership, much in the way the Tea Party is demonizing Obama's leadership in America. They paint a picture of disunity, betrayal of the body politic, a 'stab in the back' for decent citizens by a government beholden to 'special interests' and unspecified 'elites'. More coded dog whistling to convince the electorate that their government is weak and incapable of protecting the country from outside threats and the export of jobs. Our PM is branded a liar, wooden, childless and weak. Ring a bell? Well it bloody well should.

The latest strategy in the US Congress is to link repeal of progressive social policies in areas such as abortion to an agreement on reducing the budget deficit. A quick scan of the signs on show at Abbott's 'people's revolt' rally reveal a similar bent. Ring a bell? Well it bloody well should.

One of the Tea Party pin up boys, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has called for a “roadmap” for the economy, brought out last year, which "would essentially privatize Social Security (a failed effort by George W. Bush); replace Medicare with vouchers that people would use in the private insurance market but that would likely not increase in value as the cost of care went up; and revise the tax code so that the middle class would end up paying higher taxes than the wealthy. Low-income people would be especially hard hit by Ryan’s plan." Similarly, Abbott's welfare prescriptions would be just the first step in the dismantlement of a fair income re-distribution system built up over decades. Guess who would shoulder the lion's share of Abbott's carbon emissions strategy? The low and middle class tax payer of course. It is a recipe to recycle public money away from tax payers to the big end of town polluters. Ring a bell? Well it bloody well should.

Poor fella my country....

Welcome to the twilight zone, and your host is, Andrew Bolt (run!!!!)

2011-04-05T15:57:00.004+10:00

Apologies to Crikey, but I had to reproduce this. What a scary place to find yourself whilst channel surfing!

ABC Insiders just another vehicle for reactionary pamphleteers dog whistling for Abbott

2011-04-03T10:25:00.006+10:00

I have finally given up on this show, which should be compulsory viewing for political junkies like me. However, it has become a vehicle for right wing pamphleteers to dog whistle for reactionary politics. Attempts to counter their twaddle by sensible journalists are foiled by bullying and poor hosting. Poor Barry is more interested in his sun tan and taking revenge on Labor luminaries who have done him wrong than bringing some sense of decorum to this ongoing farce. My last feedback went like this:

"I have complained several times about the demeaning of the political discourse by enabling paid up pamphleteers to have such a high profile on this show. I am addicted to the contest of ideas at the heart of our body politic but Bolt and Ackermann are dog whistlers for a particularly nasty brand of reactionary politics, and should not be allowed to bully other journalists who actually have an open mind. Free speech by all means but just give them a megaphone and send them back from whence they come. I've persevered for a long time but Bolt's 'performance' today was beyond the pale - he will be back sniggering with his fellow travelers on his appalling blog before the day is out and our ABC will be further diminished under its own charter. You won't be hearing from me again Barry so you can relax and get your bets on.... "

Asylum seekers in Australia - regional framework begins to take shape

2011-04-01T08:45:00.007+11:00

VoA reports "The Asia-Pacific region has become the first to produce a framework agreement to combat human trafficking. Member nations agreed to share responsibility for the regional problem and showed some support for a controversial proposal by the Australian government during a Bali Process meeting.

Thirty-two nations in the Asia-Pacific region agreed to take a regional approach to human trafficking and people smuggling during the fourth Bali Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime. While the framework is non-binding, it is the world’s first such agreement.

The framework draws up the way in which nations should deal with people smugglers, asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and trafficking victims. The nations agreed that treatment of all parties should promote human life and dignity and reflect the principles of burden-sharing.

The Asia-Pacific region hosts 3.9-million refugees, according to the United nations, and includes source, transitional and destination nations for asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and trafficked people. Pakistan hosts 1.7-million refugees, Iran hosts more than one million, and around 150,000 refugees are residing in Thailand."

This blog has advocated a regional approach to asylum seeker processing for many years. It is encouraging to read the communique to emerge from the Bali process. We may not get an all-encompassing outcome that includes a regional processing centre, but it is important that regional players have an interest in a sensible framework that benefits all, including, most importantly, the refugees themselves. The current desperate default that leads refugees toward people smugglers is a lose lose that diminishes us all. Our common humanity demands a humane approach, that addresses regional security concerns while managing refugee claims and people movement effectively, and that precludes recruiting small states such as Nauru, desperate for foreign capital, into low rent deals with low rent politicians.

The Abbott crowd gets ugly!

2011-03-24T09:06:00.002+11:00

This lot would feel comfortable in the hate rallies of the American Tea Party, nasties that circle on the margins of Australian public life with nothing constructive to contribute. Abbott's natural constituency at work and play....

Just when we thought Abbott could not stoop any lower!

2011-03-23T20:55:00.006+11:00

The alternative PM struts his stuff. It takes me back to the Uni of Sydney in the 70s when this same turkey routinely made a fool of himself spewing piss and wind to rabble rouse. Ladies & gentlemen we present for your entertainment, the new leader of the Australian Tea Party, Tony 'the moose' Abbott. Can anyone put this to Duelling Banjos?]

Is the Liberal Party guilty of ‘race baiting’? - Political Sword article

2011-03-21T09:42:00.003+11:00

I came across this excellent piece today, posted on the Political Sword blog.

This is a blog for grown-ups, so I suggest the pygmy possums that trip the light fantastic across much of the virtual landscape stay away.

I like this comment:

"Thank you for the link to Peter Hartcher's article. He blows hot and cold, doesn't he? One week he's all over the government like a rash(last week), this week he's condemning them to a fast descent through the 7 stages of Hell. I think he's suffering from 'The Great Unhinging' that Possum predicted would happen. It seems that the political journosphere are having to cope with the reality that they are just another source for political opinion, and not the Delphic Oracles they had been pumped up to be before the Web 2.0 scene got into full swing and we all started having our own opinions and putting together pieces that outshone theirs by a country mile, and showed them up to be the political equivalent of the Wizard of Oz, cloistered in their Ivory Towers down there in the Canberra Press Gallery, hobnobbing with the political 'stars' on a daily basis and getting their little tidbits of political gossip fed to them. Big deal! Sometimes it's better to be 'Unhinged' from all that, you see the political world much clearer I
reckon."

Great work, love this blog!

I spotted Virginia Trioli on ABC News24 on the breakfast segment this morning. Classic example, yet again, of Virginia (no one understands how important I am) wanting to be the news. Some poor bloke was being grilled on the situation in Libya and VT was demanding from him an answer as to 'how long this would take'?, as if this guy was making these decisions. She and many of her ilk have joined the Alan Jones school of interviewing. Unless you give an answer that meets their pre-determined spruik and self-important judgement on what's what, you are interrupted and rudely interrogated. Its sooooo tedious.

Another bug bear at present is the mindless fawning after Prince Willie, the latest poster boy for Corporate Windsor, or Vice-President elect for Windsor public relations. It was pleasing to see Paul what's his face telling VT he just does'nt get it. I'm with you Paul, especially given it will be the Australian tax player that foots the bill. Bring on a republic post haste before we have several more generations of this clever PR firm foisted on us, glad handling and setting the benchmark for the 'hail fellow well met' stakes.

Media rabbits abound on the left & right in the carbon tax debate

2011-03-19T11:05:00.006+11:00

Has anyone noticed the amount of mindless chewing being done in the media hothouse on the subject of the carbon tax, tax compensation and what it means to the number 46.

What a tedious dialectic (although this is too grand a word for the claptrap about on both sides of the divide). On one side Gillard and all who sail in her are grossly incompetent, recalcitrant, lying misanthropes who want to destroy our bourgeois inheritance. At the other extreme Gillard et al have not moved nearly fast enough to claim the high ground of environmental sanctity in a quest for the holy grail of carbon sequestration, presumably in a metaphorically large place where the sun doesn't shine (yelp).

On some of the more enlightened blogs you can find a reasoned approach to the subject, trying to pick the lumps of gold out of cow pats strewn about the media landscape. These are thin on the ground. Yesterday Crikey, through its political correspondent Bernard Keane, had another crack at Labor for not getting the message right on the carbon tax. Methinks a lot of selective hearing is going on, with the prejudiced mindset only hearing what tickles the pre-determined fancy. I commented on this piece as follows:

"Hmm, methinks there is a bit of rabbiting on here. From day one the Govt. has said that the major polluters will be taxed and the revenue stream will be used to compensate low & middle income earners and applied to renewable energy initiatives. The detail of said compensation will be in the budgetary process mix, presumably to be outlined on budget night. Garnaut’s prescriptions will be thrown in with elements of the Henry review to extract a politically saleable package. If it doesn’t capture the electorate’s fancy Labor will be tossed out at the next election. However, if it does they will come back with a majority in the House with a Green dominated Senate. Thence your environmental ‘carrots’ will be easier to get through the Parliament. Its all about real politic in a 3 yr cycle. As Rudd discovered, if you get the rhetoric out of tune with the art of the possible, you get the shaft. I think Gillard et al get this and they are trying to get the timing right, but yet again, they may get it wrong (phew!)."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna hold your haaand, I wanna hold your haaaaaaaand!

Lumpen media winning propaganda war against Labor Government

2011-03-15T14:57:00.002+11:00

Crikey posted a piece today on the shortcomings of the Labor Government, accusing the party of lacking guts & personnel. However, the author is failing to take into account the minefield strewn before those same personnel on a daily basis by an orchestrated media campaign to win back office for the lumpen reactionary mob. I had this to say by way of comment, which reprises sentiments oft repeated here:

"This email (see comment from Climate Change) from the crypto-tea party lunatic fringe just about sums up one of the most egregious attempts to grab power in recent times, apart from the invasion of Iraq. A conga line of mediocre journalists have failed the test of detachment, objectivity and intellectual rigour and have climbed on board. The truly dreadful lumpen mob that masquerade as journalists in the Murdoch stable run rough-shod over the public clearing houses of information and analysis. The ABC is meant to counter this, but presently it is operating as a ‘parenthetical amplification’ of this propaganda machine.

The polls for Labor can be expected to fall in the face of a relentless fear campaign waged over putting a price on carbon and over asylum seekers. The gutter press has banged the fear drum louder than the politicians, with shock-jocks oiling the wheels of a propaganda machine on a very nasty roll. Goebbels would have been proud of the orchestrated smear of the so-called ‘carbon tax’.

The daily fare of spin, laced with fear and loathing has become so ubiquitous I find it difficult to follow the news cycle, something to which I’ve always been addicted. Crikey and its affiliated blogs are a breath of fresh air, although the disappointment with the position Labor is in and the difficulties of countering the propaganda of the gutter press is palpable at times, but jeez Bernard you could probably make a better fist of it by taking a slightly more forensic look at what is really going on! What ever shortcomings Labor has, they pale into insignificance when measured against the mediocrity and lumpen reactionary melange swamping the public arena, oiling the wheels of one of the most cynical power grabs in living memory…"

Our ABC losing the plot on carbon tax, nuclear energy and politics in general

2011-03-14T09:59:00.005+11:00

Has any one been following 'our' ABC lately? It has become a vehicle for spruiking anti-government nonsense. Insiders on Sunday took the cake. I complained to the show and to the ABC complaints area. My comment to Insiders went like this:

"By contrast with last week your panel today was puerile and infantile. They spent most of the time bucketing Gillard & Rudd and what amounts to very little on the carbon tax, when the politics of the day are beset with serious issues. We could have had Abbott talking to the joint sitting, swinging his arms and telling them about how shit happens in Afghanistan, and we too have a tea party! Walsh and Bolt don’t have the necessary intellect to grapple with the issues of the day. Everything the government does is viewed through a narrow prism, liberally fertilised by the main by-product of their fevered brains – bullshit. At least Farr has a go at ‘balance’ but he reverts to the hail fellow well met default too easily. Barry, Barry, Barry, maybe its time to put your feet up….I turned you off half way as it was so intellectually debilitating."

Insiders, or as one wag put it 'Inciters', is the worst offender, frequently supplying some of the worst wing-nut commentators with a glad-handled forum, but has anyone noticed how key players on ABC News24 and RN have fallen into the default of government bashing? On a daily basis the slightest hint of variation from the Labor line by Rudd or Combet or whomever is pounced on as evidence of leadership murmurings and a failure of minority government. Gillard is criticised for basically being alive and in the job!

The trouble is Kelly, Trioli, Gilbert, Faine, Curtis and a conga line of mediocre journalists fail the test of detachment, objectivity and intellectual rigour. Perhaps their careers were advanced during the awful Howard years and they owe the reactionary side of politics something! I don't know what it is and I am afraid to know but, as a result, the truly dreadful lumpen mob that masquerade as journalists in the Murdoch stable run rough-shod over the public clearing houses of information and analysis, serving a right wing agenda to put ABBOTT in power. It is truly revolting to see how media is manipulated by robber barons to pursue their commercial interests and power games. The ABC is meant to counter this, but presently it is operating as a 'parenthetical amplification' of the lumpen propaganda machine.

How did this happen? What is behind it? Perhaps Mark Scott could let us all know why his journalists have become spokespersons for one of the most cynical power grabs in living memory, driven by the MSM.

Human rights in Australia - fear works when journalists fail the test of integrity

2011-03-08T09:22:00.002+11:00

Well, we have the expected fall in polls for Labor because of the relentless fear campaign waged over putting a price on carbon and asylum seekers. The gutter press (sorry, the Murdoch press) has banged the fear drum louder than the politicians, with shock-jocks oiling the wheels of a propaganda machine on a very nasty roll. Goebbels would have been proud of the orchestrated smear of the so-called 'carbon tax'.

I sent the following message to the Liberal Party yesterday:

"Congratulations,

Your cheap politics and fear tactics have got you a poll jump. But as for convincing voters you are an alternative credible government you will find this tactic to be pyrrhic. You are trashing the national interest through your low rent strategies and it will come back to haunt you.

Good luck with that…"

It remains to be seen whether the fear-mongering that has become the major currency of the Coalition will ultimately win out. It worked for Howard during the 'Tampa' episode and by affiliation to the 'war on terror' con. The Australian electorate continues to be easily swayed by slogans that play to fear and prejudice. It is a sad reality that our body politic has not matured and that our collective capacity to critique the manipulation of mass media by sectional interests remains weak.

I am on the brink of stopping this blog as I've run out of things to say on human rights and the failings of our media commentariat. It is at a very low ebb at the moment and I seen no signs of improvement. The low rent nature of the media campaigns waged against the progressive side of politics is debilitating - the daily fare of spin, laced with fear and loathing has become so ubiquitous I find it difficult to follow the news cycle, something to which I've always been addicted. Crikey and its affiliated blogs are a breath of fresh air, although the disappointment with the position Labor is in and the difficulties of countering the propaganda of the other side is palpable at times.

I have'nt given up completely but it will take something special to renew my enthusiasm for the struggle against mediocrity and the lumpen media melange swamping the public arena. Good luck and good day...

Asylum seekers in Australia - mandatory detention has failed

2011-03-04T08:49:00.007+11:00

Reports that a new detention centre is to be commissioned by the Gillard Govt. on the mainland is a further signal (if any were needed) that mandatory detention of asylum seekers is a failed policy.

I remember when Howard said mandatory detention was working well...yes and hate was doing fine, racial tension was humming and we were all relaxed and comfortable - thanks John, I felt better then. The failed Pacific Solution and the horrors of Baxter detention centre was the legacy of 'success' Morrison was spruiking this morning. It should also be remembered that the Christmas island gulag was commissioned by the Howard Govt. in view of the failed Pacific Solution. Whole families were detained for years in some cases; detainees routinely self-harmed; we bribed a failing state to be complicit in our cruelty toward refugees.

Faced with revolt within his own ranks Howard was forced to soften his approach, but it was only at the margins. I think it is instructive to know what was behind these policies - and yes at their core lay racism, shamelessly exploited by politicians. Instead of moral leadership we get the politics of race played in the worst way. We can blame Howard and his cronies for Tampa and beyond; and the ALP can only look back in shame at the policy that made it possible.

It is time to review the whole sorry story of mandatory detention. When authorities fail to ensure non-Australians held in detention facilities are afforded the same basic protection and duty of care we expect for ourselves then we are all diminished.

That noted spokesperson for the loony left, Robert Manne, summed it up well:
“Howard sang a song until the people believed him. It was a horrible song, and it allowed hateful things to happen in a democracy in a way that no one would ever have believed Australia would allow” (cited in Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo).

Abbott and Morrison continue the tune, with the regular Greek chorus of MSM pamphleteers and shock-jocks providing the rhythm section.

A key concern of mine has been the long-term damage Australia has done to its international standing as an upholder of international laws and agreements by thumbing our nose at these same global instruments. The most glaring example is mandatory detention of asylum seekers. When our government contravenes international law and human rights conventions it is not in our national interest, though done in our name.

It is time for Labor to redeem itself and show some leadership on this issue. Stop building detention facilities and start meeting our obligations under international instruments on human rights and refugees. Challenge racism, stare down the xenophobia and educate the Australian people on the universality of human rights.

Liberal party called out on racist policies - Wilkie gives voice to what many already know!

2011-03-02T09:19:00.011+11:00

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has given voice to what many of us concerned with human rights have known for a long time - the Coalition taps into nascent racism to whip up electoral support. This has been going on for a long time, but put its ugly head above the parapet with the Tampa fiasco and the subsequent asylum seeker policies. Leaders and their bandwagon of fellow politicians, shock-jocks and a conga-line of MSM journalists, have beaten this drum, sometimes softly and other times with full amplification.

In a report in The Age Wilkie's speech to Parliament is quoted:

''I stand today to condemn the racism that eats at the Liberal Party and I call on the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to show strong leadership and to stamp it out, once and for all,''

I say to Mr Abbott: you must lance this boil,

It is not good enough to dismiss the hate inhabiting the dark corners of the Liberal Party, and the widespread community concern it engenders, by just noting that your most senior operatives merely go a little too far - what you should have done is sack such people immediately from the shadow ministry and read the lot the riot act.

You must also look afresh at your party's policies, determined to address the way hate corrupts your party's approach to public policy. For instance, asylum seekers are not 'illegals' or terrorists, and heartfelt protection is not afforded by temporary protection visas.

Trying to deny asylum seekers the use of surplus defence housing is nothing short of an act of bastardry. And threatening to slash foreign aid is abominable.''

Coalition spokespersons are out today dismissing everything Wilkie said, but what a bunch of hollow men they are. This is a real problem that requires courageous leadership.

On another front, the hate rhetoric engendered around racial, ethnic and religious difference is flowing into the debate on pricing carbon. The vilification of the PM and anyone who has the temerity to stand against the fear campaign waged by Abbott and his 'coterie' has engendered death threats and foul abuse toward another independent, Tony Windsor. This benighted strategy of using extreme language to prosecute a political argument can easily inflame unhinged minds, and believe me, there are a lot of unhinged people on the fear and hate side of the political divide.

Asylum seekers in Australia: Coalition again shows its true colours - 'One Nation' lite

2011-02-22T11:03:00.006+11:00

This blog has been banging on for years about the tendencies within the extreme rump of the Coalition to tap into One Nation style politics. Howard did it, Turnbull did it, and now Abbott is doing it. I suspect the latter has been pivotal to the strategy from day one.

As I commented on a Poll Bludger posting recently:

"I notice a lot of comments about Abbott’s mouthing of Oldfield’s nastiness. This is not surprising as Oldfield and Abbott used to be chums, with Davey boy working on Abbott’s staff. Pauline was a Liberal, and when she got out of hand as a rogue trader Howard commissioned Abbott to pull her down. No doubt Oldfield was able to supply some of the ammunition. Its like the goanna chasing & swallowing its own tail; their all round bully boy/girl antics keep being regurgitated as the tail is coughed up."

The MSM have finally picked up on this tendency within the Coalition. This has been studiously ignored by many within the political commentariat, to their ever-lasting shame. A report in The Age today highlights divisions within the Liberals on asylum seeker policy. I wrote last year:

"Abbott's macho, pseudo religiosity and manic physical self-flagellation clearly appeals to many of the 'me me journalists' and the crypto-Hansonite set but it makes my skin crawl. What does it say about the psychological health of a country that goes within a whisk of electing a major political party that had as the centrepiece of its electoral pitch the punishment of a few miserable refugees? It beggars belief that in the 21st century our body politic can be so trivialised".

Shame on you, shame on me, shame on all of us....read some of the comments on this piece in The Australian to have your stomach truly churned.

Labor tackles racism and reprises multiculturalism

2011-02-17T09:15:00.007+11:00

Click here to view Ch 10 News item

The dog whistling politics of the Coalition has come back to bite it on the bum. It is about time the sunshine was let in on this grubby corner of the extreme right's campaign to win office on the back of fear and division. It's an Abbott speciality of course and those out there peddling this racial vilification stuff are doing his bidding. An anti-Islam campaign has been festering for some time within the bowels of the Coalition and now its ugly shape is being revealed.

As I wrote in a post last year, Abbott ran "...for the highest office on a platform of unbridled entitlement politics, encouraging division, selfishness and 'get out of my way' pitches to people who think Government is about nothing more than serving their narrow interests. Labor had to tip toe through an electoral mine field of electors easily in thrall to hate-mongering, which has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government."

Nothing has changed....

Why do we tolerate nastiness toward asylum seekers?

2011-02-15T10:37:00.007+11:00

Has anyone noticed an improvement in 2011 in the treatment of refugees? I have'nt. I turned on ABC24 this morning to find the Liberal spokesperson on immigration, Scott Morrison, attacking the Govt. for assisting financially the families of refugees killed on Christmas Island to attend the funerals of their lost relatives. How low can this polity sink? Even Hockey found this a nasty too far. The meanness of spirit behind this base politics continues to disgust me. Sometimes I can barely bring myself to look at and listen to the horror of our treatment of asylum seekers.

I once worked for a government that sold its soul to a devil. Our enthusiastic complicity in an illegal war, our rank hypocrisy in hectoring other countries about human rights, and our systematic violation of the rights of refugees was more than I could stomach; I withdrew gradually my services and then myself from the professional world I had inhabited for nigh twenty years. I found myself in a fog of depression that threatened to destroy my life. Everywhere I looked I saw Islamophobia, sanguineness in the face of abject cruelty to our fellow human beings, bureaucratic solutions to human suffering. People I had loved were sprouting the poisonous stuff of ethnic demonization and the mindless slogans of hate and intolerance.

I set myself on a path of healing but I am constantly set back by the reality of hate politics; the mindless characterisation of people on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity.

I kept thinking of two people I loved, and who had seen me through earlier difficult times, when a good friend was all that stood between me and dangerous depression. One of these great friends was a colleague who died in the Jog Jakarta air disaster; the other was a refugee from Iran who I met at University in India and who migrated to the US. Both of these wonderful human beings were/are great humanists with a zest for life. Oh yes, and they were/are Muslims...

Merry Christmas and could we do better on the human rights front in 2011?

2010-12-12T10:13:00.006+11:00

As this tumultuous year comes to a close I have been pondering the direction of our moral compass when it comes to the human rights of refugees:

. We still see children behind bars because their parents or guardians had the courage & temerity to arrive on our shores unannounced

. Many accepted refugees struggle to find public housing and to get a toe hold on the economic ladder

. Asylum seekers in the twilight limbo of our detention centres are self-harming again out of desperation with a system that grinds painfully slowly and which treats them like criminals

. Trash language such as 'illegals', 'boat people', 'queue jumpers' and the rest of the nasty lexicon continues to pepper our air waves and be bandied about by politicians, shock jocks and right wing pamphleteers so as to press the buttons of the permanently credulous and the pygmy intellects of the lumpen mob

. A promise to reprise the Pacific Solution and to punish refugees with reinstatement of the draconian TPV regime remains a centre piece of the Coalition's policy platform - twin violations of international human rights and refugee instruments

We have moved quite a way from the dark years of the Howard ascendency, which shamed Australia on the human rights front, but the repressive tendencies just beneath the surface of our open democracy are writ large in the report card on refugees and continue to diminish us all.

Asylum seekers and our democracy - Manne, Lake, Burnside, Megalogenis

2010-11-17T23:12:00.003+11:00

Four of the nation's leading thinkers on the subject explore the asylum seeker issue (and don't always agree): on the ALP's problems dealing with it; the historical and cultural baggage; and the political difficulties inherent in taking a progressive approach.

Chaired by Dennis Altmann (Director, Institute for Human Security, La Trobe University), the panel consists of: Julian Burnside QC, Barrister and asylum seeker advocate; Marilyn Lake, Professor of History, La Trobe University; George Megalogenis, Senior Journalist, The Australian; Robert Manne, Professor of Politics.

Presented by the Ideas and Society Program, La Trobe University, October 2010.

Click on the link to watch this La Trobe University event on Slow TV.

Asylum seekers in Australia - High Court rules in favour of boat people

2010-11-11T13:54:00.004+11:00

In a landmark decision, the High Court has ruled that two asylum seekers were denied "procedural fairness" in the review of their rejected refugee status claims.

The bovver boys and girls are already out, lambasting the Government for 'failing to protect Australia's borders', but everyone with a brain knows the Howard Government excised as much as the country as they could manage - in an alarming Pythonesque parody of power run amok - to undermine procedural fairness; bribed a failed state to be complicit in systematic violation of the rights of asylum seekers on Nauru; and, commissioned the building of the latest gulag on Christmas Island. This all happened on Howard's watch and underlines the dangers to democracy when demagogues seek to sideline the rule of law in favour of executive authority.

David Marr has written an interesting piece on this today, an excerpt of which follows:

"...A decision in favour of the men could halt dozens of deportations and change the fate of thousands of boat people held in camps across Australia. The "excision" system that ships them all through Christmas Island would become redundant. The court might put in doubt every negative finding of the so called "non statutory" Refugee Status Assessment system that has decided the fate of every boat person for a decade.

It's big. Few decisions of the court have been so anxiously and eagerly awaited. All will be clear this morning, but when lawyers gathered in August to argue the case in Canberra, judges on the bench indicated they were ready to make a big call: that boat people cannot be detained and processed outside the law..."

Yes, its big and overdue. Hopefully an opportunity will arise for many of those persecuted under the various mandatory detention regimes to seek recompense through the courts.

Asylum seekers in Australia - Bartlett nails the lie behind refugee hysteria

2010-11-02T11:02:00.001+11:00

Andrew Bartlett has penned a piece to expose the nonsense behind the hysteria whipped up in Australia over refugees by our dishonest brood of politicians. An excerpt follows:

"Despite all the significant economic, human rights, environmental, social and security issues which are important in our future relations with our neighbouring countries, the issue of a few thousand asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat each year is the one which is dominating most Australia media coverage of the Prime Minister's current visits around the region.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has finished her first East Asia Summit, had bilateral discussions with the Vietnamese government and has been to Malaysia for discussions there. Indonesia comes next. This transcript of the media conference she gave in Vietnam after the Summit shows that fully half of the questions related to asylum seekers, with most of the other split between the issue of human rights in the region and a local political story in Australia.

The issue also dominated the coverage by ABC radio of the Prime Minister's Malaysian talks, with just a brief mention at the end of the story about the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement. By contrast, this article about the visit from a Malaysian news agency makes no mention of asylum seekers or people smuggling at all, focusing instead on economic opportunities and how this links with tertiary education and training opportunities offered in Australia."

The shameful xenophobia whipped up in the Adelaide Hills recently is typical of the nastiness spawned by Coalition politicians to shore up electoral support. They pander to a dark underbelly, where sub-cultures lurk that frequently find voice through an 'easy racism'. One Nation tapped into this phenomenon and a key legacy of the Howard years sees Coalition politicians exploiting this tendency ruthlessly. Misrepresentation of facts and ethnic stereotyping are the calling cards (or ‘dog whistles’) of ‘culture warriors’ within politics and the media, pandering to the ignorant and misinformed. One fella turned out on the media to tell us the refugees would be more likely to be at risk in the case of bushfire because they could not speak English, despite the fact the asylum seekers are subject to the authority and care of several federal agencies. Perceived threats to security, health services, water, schools are straws in the wind, served up by the self-appointed spokespersons of affected communities to justify their bigotry and fear of the 'other'.

Our 'easy racism' remains our collective shame and makes of us a laughing stock in our region, where refugee issues really bite.

Human rights & the Afghan war debate - an alternative take!

2010-10-22T11:31:00.008+11:00

I was casting an eye over this piece in Crikey and thought it was a fairly shallow take on the Afghan war 'debate'. Whatever the strategic rights & wrongs of our engagement this is about the American alliance, pure & simple. If you expected a clear enunciation of geo-political and military strategies from either side of the political divide you were delusional. There is bipartisan support for the alliance and neither party will muster the backbone to challenge US hegemony. So we listen endlessly to that Killcullen chappy telling us about the inner logic of 'counter-insurgency' and, basically, talk amongst ourselves.

The Abbott nonsense about civilisation conflict reprises the twaddle peddled by the neocons justifying the 'war on terror'. Like the 'war on drugs' this war will fail miserably, leaving the situation worse. As one commentator put it recently, you do not buy into the 'messianic' philosophy of al Qaeda and its off-shoots as a counter measure. You counter the message with the rule of law, good governance and community development. You emphasise soft diplomacy and human rights - you do not actively undermine the very things you purport to stand for if you don't want to be seen as hypocritical occupiers and carpet-baggers.

Only a political solution will work in Afghanistan. We are currently supporting a regime that is so corrupt I am reminded of US support for a series of corrupt leaders in South Vietnam as a precursor to defeat in that disastrous war. They ran the country as a personal fiefdom to be plundered by themselves and their client cronies. The Karzai family are doing the same thing. The only way to counter the taliban is through genuine democracy, good governance across all areas of public administration, emphasis on civil society and a fair & equitable distribution of resources. This is not rocket science. The current disproportional division of military and civil assistance of 9:1 needs to be reversed. And we need to stop playing footsies with corruption.

Legitimacy is everything in the struggle for hearts and minds. Can anyone honestly say that Karzai has earnt legitimacy? The taliban support the violent overthrow of his corrupt and thoroughly compromised regime. Meanwhile, he steals elections and is at the peak of a regime that tolerates systematic looting and pilfering of public monies.

When visiting Kenya in 2006, Obama said the following: "Ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one's family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good. It stifles innovation and fractures the fabric of the society...It divides neighbour from neighbour".

This insight could apply equally to Afghanistan. If you can address these issues you have the best hope of counter-insurgency!

Asylum seekers in Australia - children out of detention

2010-10-19T10:14:00.003+11:00

In a good first step, the Australian govt has announced changes to the detention regime that will see children released with their carers. Much of the overall approach remains punitive in nature but the ongoing violation of the rights of children was untenable for a western democracy.

Newspapers across the land, including the SMH, has reported the changes positively. However, Amnesty and others have criticised the failure to grasp the nettle and do away with mandatory detention. The AI spokesperson lamented, "As AI has highlighted time and again, Australia is the only country to mandatorily (sic) detain asylum seekers in this way...by reaffirming its commitment to the policy, the government is failing to acknowledge that this system is not working."

As I have proffered previously, Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers, the respective processing authorities, and the countries in the firing line. Opening a regional dialogue and developing a well-resourced multilateral approach, empowering all parties with a stake in a solution to this growing human crisis, would be a good start.

Children out of Detention - a campaign renewed

2010-10-18T09:54:00.003+11:00

I have received a message that Chilout is reprising its campaign to get and keep children out of immigration detention. Following is part of the message:

ChilOut was a volunteer group campaigning from 2001 to 2006 on behalf of children in immigration detention. They wound down their campaign after the amendment was written into the Migration Act that "Children should be detained as a measure of last resort." At the same time, children were removed from the main immigration detention centres (IDCs) and put out into the community either on bridging visas or residence determinations. The only children held in any form of secure facility - residential housing - were those whose parents were a proven security or flight risk. This was not a radical left agenda. It was done by the Howard government.

The sad fact is that right now 618 children are being held in detention facilities - of the 628 in the immigration detention regime, only 10 are in the community under residence determinations. If you read the very small footnotes in the Immigration department detention statistics summary, you will see that this is the only form of detention where the person does not have to be accompanied at all times by a designated person i.e. under guard going to and from school....

Many children have not left their place of detention in months. While it was laudable that the ALP policy was to remove children from IDCs - the main detention centres - the result has been that kids are now held for long periods in places that do not have anything close to adequate facilities. At least the IDCs were purpose built to house people for long periods and have recreational and educational facilities. Places such as the Darwin Asti Motel are cramped, with only a cement carpark for children to play in. 150 afghan boys held in the Darwin Lodge have not been outside since April. Dr Louise Newman, an adviser to Government on immigration detention issues, has stated that in some cases, detention centres are actually better than the alternatives currently being used for children.

Sadly, ChilOut has had to resume our campaign in light of so many kids being held in immigration detention facilities in unacceptable conditions that are a breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When we ended our first campaign, there was overwhelming support from the Australian community to ensure that children were not being detained. When we closed up shop, members of our group were drained - emotionally, physically and financially.

But there is no way we are going to stand by and watch this happen again. Not in our name, not in our country. No way. We will not allow our government to damage and traumatize another round of vulnerable children who fled to us with arms outstretched, seeking safety and protection.

The first time around we were just simple middle-class mums and dads who thought a couple of letters to the papers would solve the issue. After a 5 year hard-fought struggle we are seasoned campaigners, polished media performers and savvy political operatives. And we are mad as hell that we have to do this all over again.

For more information or to join the campaign, go to www.chilout.org

Did they queue?

2010-10-12T16:39:00.002+11:00

Vietnamese asylum seekers

Asylum seekers in Australia - Chris Bowen addresses migration in his new role as Minister

2010-10-11T09:15:00.004+11:00

Embrace Australia reports, "in his first major public address as Minister for Immigration & Citizenship, Chris Bowen spoke of the importance of immigration and multiculturalism to Australia “Immigration is central to the fabric of our nation, with around two in five Australians born overseas, or with a parent who was born overseas. I’m one of them. My father’s family – the Bowens – migrated to Australia from Wales in the 1860s to mine coal. My mother came here 100 years later – in the 1960s – as a self-described ‘ten pound tourist’. So I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Australia’s migration program”

Bowen also advocated Australia adopting a “middle position” on asylum seekers and boat people “we must comply with our refugee convention obligations but that we must have as orderly and fair process as possible, that we must rigorously check claims for asylum – will not be popular with either side of a polarised debate. But it is the only sustainable policy. Sound grabs are presented as simple solutions in this debate. The cheap talk of ‘turning the boats back’ comes easily but doesn’t mean much. Sound policy takes more thought”

Bowen added that a regional processing centre would only succeed within a regional framework “A Regional Protection Framework, in line with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) principles, and is a mechanism to bring more fairness to the treatment of asylum seekers while removing the incentive for people to undertake dangerous journeys by boat”

Bowen was giving the keynote address at the opening of the Migration 2010 Conference in Sydney.

This all sounds sensible in theory. This blog has argued for a regional framework for years. It worked in the case of the Vietnamese refugees, many of who came by boat. However, in the absence of bipartisanship on this subject every step toward a solution that protects human rights and meets national security imperatives is muddied and trivialised for political gain. Until there is a quantum of maturity and sophistication brought to the contest of ideas on this subject, asylum seekers will continue to be kicked from pillar to post in a tawdry political game.

Did they queue?

2010-10-06T10:21:00.005+11:00

Jewish refugees looking for a safe haven in the late 1930s

Asylum seekers in Australia - A Barista with a heart

2010-09-29T22:49:00.003+10:00

Every now & then I stumble upon a piece written by someone who gets the agony of being outcast and demonized because you escaped tyranny. It is not an intellectual exercise in legalese or political rhetoric to drum up votes, but a heartfelt plea for decency and a fair go.

I have been banging away on this blog for five years or so in a quixotic way to try to convince a few souls that we have got asylum seeker policy badly wrong; that we have betrayed ourselves by letting our society tolerate a regime of punishment and persecution for people who dare to seek sanctuary on our shores.

I came across this blog post today by a barista! Here's part of what it had to say:

"Truth is no government has ever stopped the boats & the reality is no government can. I don’t know why we can’t extend our hand & help people who are desperate and are at risk, considering this is something we have committed to. We live in country where we haven’t been subjected to these types of experiences & yet we are one of the biggest critics of how people should conduct themselves when they are trying to survive. Who the hell are we to judge to people on how they should go about surviving? Life or death situations generally do not come with a guidebook with instructions on how it should be conducted in an orderly manner. Scared people do desperate things to survive, such as board an unseaworthy vessel & sail across the high seas to a country that isn’t even welcoming of them…"

When are we going to get our mojo back and treat these people as we would want to be treated in their shoes...?

Asylum seekers in Australia - is it legitimate to have punishment of boat people as a centre piece of an election platform?

2010-09-19T09:38:00.008+10:00

As you would expect from a political party that reaps returns from its investment of political capital on the demonization of refugees, the Coalition continues its obnoxious rhetoric on boat people. Make no mistake, this is not a reasoned debate on the rights and wrongs of refugee policy. The Coalition has gained rich pickings from fear-mongering, as evidenced by the Queensland vote. The 'tea party' rump of the One Nation party has drifted back to the LNP, in thrall to simple minded messages on debt & deficit, the mining tax and good ole refugee bashing.

Following are some links to people who think and worry about this phenomenon in our body politic:

The refugee myth: How to make things seem worse than they are.

Pacific Solution no real answer.

Simplistic scare tactics will not stop the boats.

While I am no fan of our engagement in Afghanistan, to suggest all young Afghani men should fight the Taliban rather than flee from violence and persecution is reminiscent of those who criticise Holocaust victims of the Nazis for not fighting. A lot of them were young men! Following is an example of this execrable nonsense, fuelling intolerance and hate:

Our boys arrive by bodybag.

Australian media and political bastardry - finally someone (John Menadue) in the know calls for a public enquiry!

2010-09-15T09:54:00.008+10:00

A comment on Poll Bludger this morning went like this:

"Deb Cameron on ABC 702 has just had an interview with John Menadue re the bias of the Press during the campaign in which he served it up to the ABC and the rest of the media big time.

The interview will be posted on the ABC website under Mornings on 702 later this morning and she is asking for comments – it is really worth a listen. He is calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the behaviour of the press."

Menadue's earlier critique of the media in Melbourne recently can be found at the Centre for Policy development website.

This is overdue and much needed, before we are picking over the bloodied carcass of our body politic and wondering where we went wrong. The skewed opinion settings of the mainstream media have galled me for a long time. Narrow sectional interests get a helpful leg up in most areas of debate on public policy. We also get a diet of reactionary, simple minded drivel on asylum seekers, deficit financing, interest rates; a plethora of important areas of public policy are 'spun' through the lens of media celebrities who survive on a dumbed-down strategy of sound-bites, 'gotcha' moments and limpid sensationalism. Political analysis has been reduced to talk-show patter and info-tainment for a presumed audience with the concentration span of a distracted gnat.

Well, hey, many of us out here in listener land have maintained a healthy interest in the state of our body politic, and are frankly sick of the 'me me' crowd setting the media agenda. It is time for serious journalists to re-assert themselves. There are plenty of punters that will thank them for it....

Australia votes - the challenge will be to keep the bastards honest - the media I mean!

2010-09-08T09:15:00.005+10:00

And so it goes on. The MSM have already launched into a partisan trammeling of the minority government outcome. Willful distortions of independent statements to suggest lack of legitimacy is the current stock in trade of the lumpen commentariat. LP has a good post on this subject.

How can we protect our democracy from the elements of the feral fourth estate that are in hock to reactionary forces in this country? It is a version of the 'howling', where wraiths run riot over the twisting and wailing body politic or a political take of the 'underworld' trilogy (I can feel a movie coming on!). It is sad that so many in the mainstream media have morphed into spruikers for the lumpen mediocrity creeping across the land.

As noted previously, we are at risk of an upsurge of lumpen commentary to assist a tea party type response to this election. Abbott is the type of politician to encourage low rent reaction as it plays to the fear and division game book. Watch the banners as the blooms of bile billow forth from the bowels of the benighted bastions of ole Grubb Street (apologies, apologies, apologies....).

Aid to PNG - Lack of oversight - Australia's awry aid model

2010-09-04T12:39:00.008+10:00

I WAS STRUCK by the report in PNG Attitude (No 150, August 2010) on alleged corruption within the aid program.

In 2003 I was lamenting the approach that was fast being adopted by AusAID to devolve administration and program management to Port Moresby. The setting up of sector-based program silos seemed novel at the time, but I had worries about loss of corporate memory in Canberra and, of perhaps more concern, a lack of oversight in contract governance. It seemed to me that full program devolution would bring with it a raft of problems.

One of the scenarios I aired at the time went like this: What happens when one of our large projects in the law and justice sector has a contractual problem involving misuse of funds? Under the previous arrangements, desk officers and contract managers in Canberra would oversight all aspects of a contract. It was sometimes an unwieldy process, particularly if the hands-on managers were inexperienced, but there were checks and balances in the system to minimize the opportunity for ongoing misuse of funds.

Of course,the reality of delivering complex projects on the ground throws up implementation delays, personnel problems, administrative inefficiencies and so on, and it is important to have people in the field to liaise with government counterparts and contractors and to report on these matters. But it is equally important to have a cadre of people back in Canberra who understand the activity, manage the contract and who are hands-on with the Australian managing contractor. You also need highly skilled and independent monitoring and evaluation that can be mobilized as required. Officers in the field are on two year postings. The majority move on to other things on completion of the posting. Whether they are program or contract managers, their corporate memory is limited to their time in country.

Much of the management of the program has been devolved to sector-based units, made up of high-priced consultants, AusAID officers and locally engaged staff, who manage contracts and liaise with government and project personnel. Posted officers and consultants have limited tenure in country and it beggars belief that all the complexities and governance issues associated with delivering large program activities can be managed effectively under this regime. Some of these activities can involve implementation periods of five years and more. Certain activities in the police and corrections area have been implemented over several phases covering 10-15 years or longer.

It comes as no surprise to me that corruption has raised its ugly head in these circumstances.

Two other pieces in Attitude caught my eye. One called upon Australia to scrap the aid program because it is feeding corruption and another focused on the need to get the arrangements between local government and civil society right as a starting point to reform of the PNG political system.

I would conflate these issues so that Australian aid shift focus abruptly to the urgent reform of local level government systems (including the administrative enabling and regulatory framework), decentralization of service delivery and the governance of financial and program administration at all levels of government.

Golly gosh, what a novel idea!

Australia votes - or should it be, 'News Ltd lumpen commentariat and ABC lap dogs decide election!'

2010-08-31T08:39:00.010+10:00

Malcolm Fraser nailed this on Q & A last night. The Murdoch press has sought to remove Labor from office by a devious editorial policy that spins most key federal political issues in favour of the Coalition. Malcolm observed Murdoch media is doing the same to Obama and did a job on Labour in the UK. When a few members of the audience giggled at this observation, Fraser asked them why they thought this was funny. He's right, its a tragedy for our democracy.

The relentless banging of the fear drum on refugees, pink batts, BER, debt & deficit, etc etc has seen the lumpen commentariat of the Murdoch press shape public opinion in an unhealthy way. Commercial TV has been a disgrace for a long time as far as balance in political reporting goes. Why Laurie Oakes is considered a serious journalist has escaped me for years. For whatever reason, and I expect corporate business interests and the appeal to the lowest common denominator to chase ratings are largely to blame, commercial TV media favour the Coalition. Abbott has been glad handled by key media personalities and gallery journalists throughout his tenure as Coalition leader.

That leads us to the ABC. The trend in recent times has been for serious current affairs programs to use Murdoch media style approaches to covering political issues. We get the constant crosses to so-called expert commentators, many of whom are so politically biased as to verge on the farcical. There is also the tendency to use the Murdoch media lumpen stalwarts as guest commentators. Fran Kelly regularly seeks the views of Denis Shanahan (gulp!), one of the most compromised of the lumpen players in the gallery. News 24 constantly relies on right wing commentary to 'fill' the analysis pieces. ABC Insiders often has Murdoch 'info-tainers' masquerading as journalists, sprouting an endless indictment of Labor and glad handling the Coalition. The serious journalists spend most of the program counter-balancing the paid advertising of these 'spruikers'.

The latest glaring example of skewed coverage is the reporting on the 2PP position on vote counting. Of course, the Murdoch press has spun this relentlessly in favour of the Coalition. Sadly, the ABC has fallen in to the same biased cesspit, thereby poorly serving the public. Antony Green has exposed the nonsense at the heart of this mindless chicanery. There must come a stage when it is questionable whether the ABC is meeting its charter to deliver fair, objective coverage of political affairs. I have seen little evidence of it in recent times.Poll Bludger has a good post on this issue today. As one comment on this post put it, "The media still doing their best to undermine democracy. Maybe from now on we should just let them decide for us seeing as they think they know better. Sad state of affairs." It seems our media is in a race to the bottom ...poor fella my country!

Australia Votes - open letter to GetUp

2010-08-24T11:34:00.002+10:00

Dear GetUp

As I emailed you earlier, much as I appreciate a lot of your advocacy work, your idealistic glad handling of everything Green was indulgent frippery with potentially dire consequences! As the Greens never have to contemplate Govt it is easy to pitch to all their soft-left friendly policies. In their lovely paradigm all these areas would be addressed as per the Green agenda, but our body politic is beset with serious problems….

The worst side of Australia came to the fore in this election campaign. Media driven hate mongering, sexism, 'dumbing' down of political debate, the endless round of media grabs on petty nothings.

We are ill-served by today's media. It is driving a 'me me' celebrity culture that enables a rank opportunist like Abbott to run for the highest office on a platform of unbridled entitlement politics, encouraging division, selfishness and 'get out of my way' pitches to people who think Government is about nothing more than serving their narrow interests. Labor had to tip toe through an electoral mine field of electors easily in thrall to hate mongering, which has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government.

The shabby state of our body politic is alarming. It is in these circumstances that extremist politics flourish. I am amazed that we have sunk so low yet again and so quickly. Public intellectuals and serious journalists need to ask themselves how this happened. It is a canker and nothing good will come of it......please get real when you try to influence voters. GetUp preached a soft left line relentlessly, playing into the hands of the far right. The naivety of your strategy is there for all to see. Yes, the soft left vote swung to the Greens, but how does this help the cause of progressive politics when you enable a reactionary fear monger like Abbott to crow about his electoral success?

The hemorrhaging of Labor’s primary vote to the Greens will be a major factor if Abbott is elected. Trust me - you will have to re-set your progress meter to negative in some key areas of human rights and social justice under this scenario. Are memories of Howard so short?

Abbott's macho, pseudo religiosity and manic physical self-flagellation clearly appeals to many of the 'me me journalists' and the crypto-Hansonite set but it makes my skin crawl. What does it say about the psychological health of a country that goes within a whisk of electing a major political party that had as the centerpiece of its electoral pitch the punishment of a few miserable refugees? It beggars belief that in the 21st century our body politic can be so trivialized.

As I indicated earlier in another email (also not replied to) politics is not a zero sum game...and I'm afraid Getup has been played in the extreme right's game plan. When you split the progressive vote in this country the right fills the vacuum and thus you get the Queensland result.....

Australia Votes - MSM, Greens & GetUp enable Abbott to contemplate his new 'pacific ' solution

2010-08-22T08:38:00.005+10:00

Ironic as it may seem, the combination of a heavily biased MSM, including the ABC, and the hemorrhaging of Labor's primary vote to the greens and in response to campaigning by groups such as GetUp, has almost delivered Government to the most thuggish, reactionary politician this country has produced in recent decades. He will return to the Pacific solution, he will scrap the NBN, he will revisit unfair work practices, he will implement a harsh regime to make those on welfare suffer.

Queensland has reverted to type, attracted to Abbott's Hansonite agenda. Parts of Western Sydney have been equally in thrall to the hate messages.

The debt and deficit fear drum has also been beaten relentlessly, with the acquiescence of a lemming like media train that has played a huge role in determining the outcome of the election.

GetUp preached a soft left line relentlessly, playing into the hands of the far right. The naivety of their strategy is there for all to see. Yes, the soft left vote swung to the greens, but how does this help the cause of progressive politics when you enable a reactionary fear monger like Abbott to crow about his electoral success?

I was afraid this would happen. The body politic will change as a result of this election. I am fearful that the tendencies in the Australian electorate that saw Howard elected four times on the back of fear politics have been lurking under the surface, awaiting to re-emerge and further traduce the human rights record of this country.

Abbott's macho, pseudo religiosity and manic physical self-flagellation might appeal to some of the 'me me journalists' (Annabell, oh Annabel) but it makes my skin crawl. What does it say about the psychological health of a country that goes within a whisk of electing a major political party that had as the centerpiece of its electoral pitch the punishment of a few miserable refugees? It beggars belief that in the 21st century our body politic can be so trivialized. Can I suggest a few ‘journalists’ might benefit from a stint in the wilderness to re-discover their bearings and don't forget your flagellation tool!

By direct intent or by default, a large number of Australians have opted for a return to fear and division. They say you get the politicians you deserve. What does that tell us about the maturity of our emerging national consciousness? We are on the verge of becoming the soft rump of the reactionary 'tea party' set that is turning politics in the US very ugly. It will not be much prettier here if Abbott takes the reins.

As I've said repeatedly on this blog, be careful what you wish for!!

Australia Votes - political commentary traduces our Democracy - open letter to the ABC

2010-08-20T08:54:00.008+10:00

Dear ABC

In your attempt to provide 'balance' in your political reporting you have unleashed a bunch of narrow minded 'me me ' generation 'reporters' on to the political commentary stage, most of whom think they're the news. Apart from some notable exceptions, the commentary from the likes of Trioli, Crabb (who just can't get enough of Abbott unplugged - yuk!), Kelly, Uhlman, etc etc has been tortuous.

The so-called 'expert' commentary has been equally vacuous. After the Labor launch last Monday poor Joe fielded two right wing usual suspects to assess the launch. In the manner of Trioli, they both looked like they had eaten a shit sandwich every time Julia Gillard was mentioned. This is frankly not good enough.

It is bad enough that the Murdoch press have adopted an editorial line that traduces our democracy, but I expect a lot more from the ABC. The other day even the World Today fell into the trap. Eleanor Hall, whom I do admire, had Kennett on as an 'expert' on health policy. Spare me, Kennett can be called many things but an 'expert' on health policy he ain't.

And much as I have admired Red Kes over the years he has of late taken on some of the attributes of the 'me me' crowd - in other words, get out of my way because I'm the story! It is rank and it does our body politic a disservice.

If Abbott is elected on Saturday the ABC will have had a substantial hand in this outcome through mediocre analysis and mind-boggling glad-handling. And please, please don't ever let Tony Eastley go wandering off into the never never again. He may have had a rural epiphany but it was excruciating as political analysis!

Abbott wants to slide into govt on the back of more bribes to Nauru

2010-08-11T09:20:00.004+10:00

Deja vu, we've seen it all before. A policy bankrupt party expecting to win electoral favour by ramping up its rhetoric on asylum seekers. Howard & Reith offered bribes to Pres Rene of Nauru to get the Pacific Solution up & running. Now, Abbott & Morrison are doing the same nasty two step shuffle.

I was ringside as the Howard fiasco played out. Public servants were threatened with career damaging outcomes if the Nauru 'program' went off the rails.

There should have been a full judicial inquiry into the governance and human rights abuses that underlay this strategy to ensure it could not happen again. I lobbied Senator Evans to this effect and got the standard she'll be right mate response from his department. Wrong, wrong, wrong.....Click here to read an account by a Doctor familiar with Nauru to appreciate one aspect of why the Pacific Solution was a disgrace.

Susan Metcalfe has written a book on the Pacific Solution that will be launched in Melbourne on 17 August. I encourage people with an interest in this benighted area of asylum seeker governance to read her book.

Human rights set to go to hell in a handbasket in Abbott's Australia

2010-08-08T09:09:00.003+10:00

After a lengthy lay off due to travel and major surgery I have re-emerged to find Australia on the brink of electing a man who would re-introduce the 'Pacific Solution' for asylum seekers.

The dog whistle has worked again. Supported by the mainstream media, Abbott's ugly message has filtered through TV sets yet again; into the consciousness of average Australians who lack the critical skills to see through the ugliness of the strategy. Intelligent people, who would consider themselves decent and fair minded, are seriously contemplating electing a man who lost his moral compass a long time ago. He dresses his so-called conviction politics in a false religiosity, but his pitch to credulous people, who think a few people arriving by leaky boats is a threat to this country, is nasty in the extreme.

His extremist views on welfare, migration, women's rights, industrial relations will take this country backwards again. We lost valuable time in our march toward realizing a progressive and moderate body politic under Howard, evincing nothing more than lackey status to a regime now considered one of the most reactionary and incompetent in US history. Abbott is more extremist than Howard in many respects. Howard's asylum seeker policies brought shame to this country. We are now on the verge of revisiting these and worse.

The worst side of Australia has come to the fore in this election campaign. Media driven hate mongering, sexism, 'dumbing' down of political debate, the endless round of media grabs on petty nothings. We are ill-served by today's media. It is driving a 'me me' celebrity culture that enables an inadequate opportunist like Abbott to run for the highest office on a platform of unbridled entitlement politics, encouraging division, selfishness and 'get out of my way' pitches to people who think Government is about nothing more than serving their narrow interests.

The shabby state of our body politic is alarming. It is in these circumstances that extremist politics flourish. I am amazed that we have sunk so low yet again and so quickly. Public intellectuals and serious journalists need to ask themselves how this happened. It is a canker and nothing good will come of it......

Asylum seekers in Australia: PM Gillard has a chance to show some statesmanship

2010-07-05T10:19:00.005+10:00

The PM is about to announce 'changes' to asylum seeker policy. She has asked for an open debate and for the name calling to stop on both sides of the argument. On the face of it, Gillard appears to want to try to take the partisan politics out of the refugee debate.

A worst case scenario would be a pandering to the fear whipped up by Abbott and his fellow travelers, who see political opportunity in pandering to fears of 'boat people' harbored by many in the community. Howard turned this into an art form.

It seems to me that Gillard has an opportunity to present the facts on refugees and seek to conjure a return to bi-partisanship on immigration and refugee policy. Of course that won't happen while the extreme right has control of the Liberal Party, but it is a sound message for the broader populace. Fear politics has no part to play in immigration. It smacks of xenophobic and entitlement politics, which has become a stock in trade of the right wing in Coalition circles. However, there is a rump of labor support drawn to these drum beats as well.

It is time to show true leadership and chart a course that is both practical and humane.

Julian Burnside has a piece worth reading in Tuesday's Age.

Get Riz's Story on Air & send Tony Abbott a message

2010-06-20T22:44:00.004+10:00

Click here to see GetUp"s new TV ad featuring Riz, to take his story to all Australians.

Methinks Abbott may have bitten off more than he can chew with Riz and his tale.

Open letter to the Minerals Council of Australia

2010-06-10T12:53:00.003+10:00

Dear Mitch

Congratulations on your incredibly obtuse response to the RSPT. Your TV commercials are so effective I now change channels as soon as I see that chap pretending to be a concerned player and I am far from being Robinson Crusoe. This will ginger reform of your industry faster than anything the Federal Government does.

Reform of this sector’s tax regime is overdue. The replacement of a royalties regime by a super profits tax is the most efficient way of doing this. By all means argue about the transition arrangements and other structural issues, but by politicizing the Federal Government’s policy response you may have done this industry a disservice.

You can now be assured that every Federal agency and regularity authority with any interest in this industry will be charged to make a forensic analysis of your membership’s operations and financial dealings. I imagine there are some slightly nervous directors out there who had better have their houses in pristine order. You may even see calls for a review of the way mining leases are managed in this country.

I suggest you make the launch of this type of partisan political campaign at your peril. You have now got the complete attention of everyone with a brain that believes this tax reform is necessary.

Probably this is a good thing as it would be excellent to think Australian mining demonstrates world’s best practice in terms of corporate governance and global mining operations.

Good luck with that…

ABC Insiders give Abbott another free kick

2010-06-06T10:27:00.001+10:00

My message to ABC's Insiders today:

"Congratulations on today's political cabaret. Every position adopted by your panel was anti-Rudd. My god, he must be a dreadful person. He obviously does'nt tickle the journos fancy enough. Swearing off-line, golly gosh. Fraser, Hawke & Keating were such paragons of virtue in that area & 'life's a box of chocolates'. My only disappointment is that Hawke & Keating are'nt around to let you lot know a few home truths about your shoddy journalism in 'appropriate' language.

Please, please stop being a paid commercial for Abbott and bastardy inc. and do some cerebral analysis. Your take on the mining tax politics is breathtaking in its superficiality. And, Iemma dudded by Rudd! Keating would have got a giggle out of that. He kicked people from within and without the bastions of the NSW right as a bloodsport.

I for one am happy that Iemma might have got some comeuppance - he certainly dished plenty out. Why are'nt you focused on the backstabbing of Tripodi et al?

The only snippet of Petro's timely valedictory you showed was the joke about Playboy, rather than his take on human rights violations.

Nudge, nudge, wink wink, let's go get a latte and think of more ways to give Abbott our endorsement. If that @#$%^&* becomes PM you lot can take a long look at yourselves because the MSM will have had a huge hand in it, won't they Lenore? (& bonuses all round)...."

Abbott morphs back into Howard & finally reveals his true colours on asylum seekers

2010-05-27T16:39:00.004+10:00

It has been obvious to anyone that takes any notice of these matters that the Coalition lost its moral compass on the question of the human rights of refugees early in Howard's stewardship.

In a breathtaking leap back to the future Abbott and Morrison have announced today that TPVs and the Pacific Solution are to be dusted off. Forget about dog whistles, the loudhailer is out again, reminding us of Tampa and the fallout.

The Age reports "Mr Abbott said his party would find unnamed countries to process Australia-bound asylum seekers, as it did when under the dismantled Pacific Solution.

Asylum seekers were detained on Nauru and Manus Island.

As leader, Mr Turnbull upset moderates by announcing without consultation the Coalition would introduce temporary protection visas.

Both measures were described by Liberal MP Petro Georgiou as "cruel" and "regressive"."

It worked a treat for Howard. It will be interesting to see whether the body politic has matured somewhat since those depth plumbing times.

Asylum-seeker clamp breaches treaties: human rights violated by base politics

2010-05-22T09:32:00.003+10:00

As preempted in this blog, Labor's recent toughening of its stance towards asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan breaches international treaties.

Michael Gordon, writing in the Age, reports

" THE federal government has breached three international treaties and may have broken its own domestic laws by suspending the processing of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, according to an opinion prepared by three Melbourne lawyers.

It says the dramatic toughening of border protection policy discriminates on the basis of race and country of origin, in contravention of Australia's international obligations.

Prepared for the Human Rights Law Resource Centre, the opinion will be sent today to community and advocacy groups that have expressed alarm at the policy.

At least one, the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, is considering a challenge to the legality of the suspensions after launching a High Court challenge to the government's off shore processing regime this month."

GetUp gets back on track - the miners can stretch the truth but they can't scare us - one for the truth challenged Mr Abbott!

2010-05-18T10:55:00.005+10:00

Contact GetUp if you wan't to beat them at their own game, by putting this huge parody ad right alongside theirs in the papers, starting with The Australian this Thursday.

We know Abbott mislaid the truth a long time ago and just can't seem to find it!

Human rights in Australia - a warning for those attacking Labor - be careful what you wish for!

2010-05-11T09:26:00.004+10:00

I sent the following message to GetUp today. I have been a staunch critic of Rudd's back downs on human rights issues, but I have no doubt that the alternative under Abbott would be much worse:

"Whilst I applaud most of what GetUp does I am now very concerned that the relentless attack on Labor from the left and the right will realize an Abbott government. Believe me, if that happens the previous Howard regime will seem positively benign!

I agree that better ways need to be found to tackle criminality on the internet, but please temper your attack on this government’s credentials. The MSM have poured so much vitriol on Rudd that Abbott now looks like he could take office. I think Brett Solomon and Simon Sheik are articulate advocates for human rights, but an Abbott government will present such an avalanche of violations as to make this current campaign on the internet filter appear tokenistic.

As Abbott goes about the business of whipping up fear of asylum seekers, with his appalling bus, nasty rhetoric and his conga line of supporters in the MSM, the Rudd Government has desperately tried to avoid being wedged on the issue. The chest beating and hard lines that emerge from week to week indicate an abiding level of fear in the community of people arriving on these shores.

An irrational debate on population has arisen in the body politic, which threatens to turn decidedly partisan and ugly. In the absence of support for the Coalition's policy platform Abbott has taken the 'Tampa' option of cranking up the fear rhetoric; a confection of outrage towards, and threatened consequences for, desperate people who have made a dangerous voyage to escape persecution.

The 'population' posture being trotted out by Morrison and Abbott is back to the future of fear and smear; an egregious throwback to 'White Australia' thinking, much like Howard demonized Muslims to build populist support for his border control regime.

Bi-partisanship on such an important issue as immigration, population growth and cultural inclusiveness is impossible whilst a major political party sees populist opportunity in scaring people.

So we will not get a human rights charter any time soon, as the right paint this as a watering down of a government's right to do as it pleases, with nasty consequences for those caught on the wrong side of what political leaders decree makes a good Australian.

The population debate as framed by Abbott and his cohort is a rallying call for those in the community in thrall to notions of exclusivity, cultural entitlement and border protection. Faced with fairly ordinary polls, Abbott is doing what Howard and Turnbull did before him - press the 'alert and alarmed' buttons on boat people, cultural diversity and 'Australianess'. We have seen it all before - the 'reds under the beds' mantra of the 50s has been replaced with 'we will decide who comes to this country', and many credulous people fall for it, hook, line and sinker, as it feeds into their prejudices...

You are hammering Labor on its ETS back down; its asylum seeker policies; its internet filter - but you are letting Abbott off the hook! The wedges set up under the political dynamic in the Senate are electoral poison for Labor. With good intentions but political naivete, you are contributing to an MSM media construct of a government that is under-performing and lacking courage.

Howard took this country far to the right! Rudd has to tip toe through an electoral mine field of electors easily in thrall to hate mongering, which has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government. It reminds me sometimes of an obscure party grabbing public attention in the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s. They banged a few fear drums too!

Whilst rightly criticizing Rudd’s back peddling on human rights issues, be aware that the alternative would be much worse! Australia would become a much uglier place under Abbott’s stewardship. His brand of socio-religious patriarchy would determine public policy parameters in such way as to make the previous 'brutupia' look positively benign.

Politics is not a zero sum game…."

Debunking Myths About Refugees and Asylum Seekers, but the Coalition sails on ...

2010-05-04T21:56:00.006+10:00

Click here to have the myths well and truly debunked. Great job guys!

It seems the 'Abbottomater' has received a boost in the latest Newspoll. I suspect this is an outlier or more News Limited propaganda. Crikey, anyone would think that Rupert does'nt like Kev with the amount of nasty vitriol hurled at him by the Murdoch MSM. Its a pity our political journos rarely rise to the occasion and think for themselves. It seems they don't appreciate Kev's seeming disdain for their profession, but is it any wonder, given the feckless and arrogant lot they mainly are. What a bunch of lemmings! Even the ABC crowd is in thrall to the nonsense peddled by Abbott's motley crew, whether the subject is climate change, refugees or the deficit. Some of the stuff dished up on ABC local radio makes my skin crawl.

As a group, the MSM political hacks are way too impressed with themselves. Many think they are the news, but, frankly, most would'nt have the nous to develop public policy. They thrive on sound bites, simple minded takes on serious matters, and scuttle about waiting for a politician to make a gaffe. Its very tedious and little wonder the average punter prefers the footy!

Abbott beats the refugee fear drum louder & louder - human rights will be the loser under a future Coalition govt!

2010-04-29T22:49:00.007+10:00

Those of us that hoped the election of a Rudd Government would see Australia model best practice in the treatment of refugees, particularly as we take so few on an annual basis, are now alert and alarmed.

As Abbott goes about the business of whipping up fear of asylum seekers, with his appalling bus, nasty rhetoric and his conga line of supporters in the MSM, the Rudd Government has desperately tried to avoid being wedged on the issue. The chest beating and hard lines that emerge from week to week indicate an abiding level of fear in the community of people arriving on these shores. Recent polling suggests many in the electorate remain fearful of refugees that arrive by boat.

An irrational debate on population has arisen in the body politic, which threatens to turn decidedly partisan and ugly. In the absence of support for the Coalition's policy platform Abbott has taken the 'Tampa' option of cranking up the fear rhetoric; a confection of outrage towards, and threatened consequences for, desperate people who have made a dangerous voyage to escape persecution.

The 'population' posture being trotted out by Morrison and Abbott is back to the future of fear and smear; an egregious throwback to 'White Australia' thinking, much like Howard demonized Muslims to build populist support for his border control regime.

Where is the baby bonus thinking now? I thought the whole point of the Costello pantomime on having babies for mum, dad and the country was to have a bigger Australia! Yes, ladies & gentleman, you guessed it - it does'nt suit the current fear posture so lets not talk about previous policies.

Bi-partisanship on such an important issue as immigration, population growth and cultural inclusiveness is impossible whilst a major political party sees populist opportunity in scaring people.

So we will not get a human rights charter any time soon, as the right paint this as a watering down of a government's right to do as it pleases, with nasty consequences for those caught on the wrong side of what political leaders decree makes a good Australian.

The population debate as framed by Abbott and his cohort is a rallying call for those in the community in thrall to notions of exclusivity, cultural entitlement and border protection. Faced with fairly ordinary polls, Abbott is doing what Howard and Turnbull did before him - press the 'alert and alarmed' buttons on boat people, cultural diversity and 'Australianess'. We have seen it all before - the 'reds under the beds' mantra of the 50s has been replaced with 'we will decide who comes to this country', and many credulous people fall for it, hook, line and sinker, as it feeds into their prejudices...

I'm not the only one who gets the Abbott 'thing' about migration:

Read this Crikey article.

I also get Mike Carlton's take on Australia, the shonky country - right up Mr Abbott's alley, (if you know what I mean).

ABC radioland in Canberra - a divergent commentary but a human rights issue none the less!

2010-04-27T10:10:00.004+10:00

I have sent the following feedback to ABC 666 Canberra Radio this morning. Of course, it is an exercise in futility as it seems their current stable of presenters are seen as the best thing since sliced white bread. No wonder I don't like sliced white bread.

I was struck by how enjoyable local Canberra ABC radio was when the current incumbents took a much 'deserved' holiday during the kiddies break:

"I must comment on the discernible improvement I noticed on Breakfast and Mornings during the school holiday break. Your usual presenter, Solly & his 'boofhead' style talk back must have sent listeners scurrying to RN in droves in recent times. His peculiarly West Australian approach to public broadcasting is not endearing to listeners with a reasonable IQ & a grasp of current affairs.

The Sloane style of cloying giggling, particularly when she comes across a line of thought she doesn't particularly agree with is an unfortunate radio tic. I appreciate her regular guests are all people she is 'comfortable' with, so we tend to get good ole Harold's take on making money in media, the daily Murdoch spin on politics or non-political takes on feral animals, local history and whatever. Whenever the subject is current political issues the take on it is invariably 'rural conservative' in slant, which is a very limited world view (giggle, giggle). More RN....By the way, Alex, 'going forward' is gen x corporate speak, not something invented by the PM. However, I do agree it is the most redundant phrase in modern blah blah...

Afternoons is taken up with pure country 'fare' with mind-numbing discussions on everything under the sun that might have occupied my mum's CWA club, if they were all suddenly given a new lease as gen X'ers and aging Y's May be there is a discernible demographic, but I suggest baby boomer and younger listeners might appreciate something a little more challenging on the cerebral front. The quaint panels that pop up on this show, trying to be oh so clever on somewhat inane subjects are pretty tedious. Sadly, RN tends to wander off into book readings and what not during this slot so local ABC is all that is left.

You can see that I am a radio addict, and I enjoy pithy and astute commentary, lively interviews and objective current affairs analysis. I don't enjoy commercial radio style projections of the personal predilections of radio presenters who try to shape their broadcasts around their narrow take on reality - like the Solly's and Sloane's of 'radioland'. Don't we have enough of this sort of obtuse editorializing on commercial talk back?"

Refugees in Australia: UN ‘troubled’ by Australia’s treatment of asylum-seekers - Rudd does a 'Howard' on boat people!

2010-04-21T11:00:00.006+10:00

The United Nations said Monday it was "deeply troubled" by Australia's treatment of asylum-seekers, as rights group Amnesty International condemned the reopening of a remote detention centre.

Amnesty's media release follows:

"Amnesty International has condemned the Australian government’s suspension of the processing of new asylum claims by Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals, labelling it an appalling act of political point scoring, and fundamentally inconsistent with Australia’s international obligations under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

The organisation, which has repeatedly called on the government to show leadership on asylum and refugee issues, said the move smacks of opportunistic politics ahead of this year’s expected Federal election. Amnesty International is gravely concerned that this move will result in the arbitrary detention of people who have genuine protection claims.

“This decision is outrageous. Sadly, it appears that the government has caved into political pressure and is now attempting to override the rights of the most vulnerable to score political points,” said Andrew Beswick, Campaigns Manager for Amnesty International Australia. “People fleeing persecution should not be used as political footballs”.

The decision to suspend processing the claims of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers pre-empts the UNHCR’s official review of the security situation on the ground in either of those countries.

“This will compromise Australia’s international reputation as a leader in the region,” said Andrew Beswick.

Amnesty International calls upon the Australian Government to release the information on which it has based its claim that the security conditions in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have improved to such an extent as to justify this sudden blanket suspension.

“The government’s rationale for this apparently unilateral decision conflicts with the information Amnesty International and other human rights organisations have received regarding the situation on the ground for many people in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka,” said Andrew Beswick.

Amnesty International believes the Australian Government’s move sends a dangerous message throughout the Asia Pacific region. The possibility exists that as a result of this decision, other governments within the region could begin to pressure UNHCR to cease processing of Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Australian Government has a rigorous process of assessing asylum claims according to the internationally agreed criteria set out in the 1951 Refugee Convention. Under that process, individuals who are found to be at risk of torture, persecution or death, are offered our protection. Those people who are not found to have genuine claims are returned to their country of origin. As Australia is a signatory to the Refugee Convention, that process should stand.

Well over 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrive by boat are found to have genuine protection claims. This means the overwhelming majority of Afghans and Sri Lankans seeking asylum in Australia have largely been found to have genuine claims for protection. This statistic demands that the Australian Government further explain a blanket ban on these two groups.

Situations for many groups in Sri Lanka, including activists, journalists and some Tamils remain tenuous and dangerous. Similarly in Afghanistan, many individuals, in particular activists and journalists, have fled real threats from the Taliban or government-associated warlords, while women, single heads of households, unaccompanied minors, victims of trauma, people requiring medical attention and people with disabilities are at significant risk.

“There is no justification for the Australian Government’s application of a blanket suspension of the assessment of asylum claims from Afghan and Sri Lankan nationals,” said Andrew Beswick.

Amnesty International will be investigating whether the move also puts Australia in breach of its obligations under the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination."

Amnesty International is calling on the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Immigration and Citizenship to:

* Reverse their decision to suspend the processing of new asylum applications by Sri Lankan and Afghan nationals.

* Respect the rights of all refugees and asylum seekers regardless of where they come from.

* Stop over-riding the rights of the world’s most vulnerable people for political purposes.

You can take action by clicking here.

Getup has a campaign underway to tackle the Rudd Government on its backsliding path toward human rights violations. I did'nt expect to see this from Labor but it is happening and my worst fears are being realized. Click here to hear Riz's powerful story.

Refugees in Australia: Labor falls into the trap of playing the fear game with the Coalition.

2010-04-10T10:22:00.002+10:00

The Age reports "ALL asylum seekers arriving from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan will go into limbo for three to six months under a dramatic toughening of Australia's border protection policies aimed at curbing the boats.

Sri Lankans will not be processed for at least three months while Afghans will face a wait of at least six months, as the government flagged that people from these countries will face a much tougher battle for entry.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the shift coincided with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reviewing its guidelines.

But Opposition Leader Tony Abbott branded yesterday's move an ''election fix'' that would not stop the boats.

The policy reversal, which jettisons Labor's election pledge to process arrivals quickly, was announced yesterday by Senator Evans, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor."

Rudd et al have been moving toward a more hard line approach to 'boat people' as Abbott and his bandwagon ramped up the political invective on asylum seekers. In the absence of support for the Coalition's policy platform Abbott will take the Tampa option of cranking up the fear rhetoric; a confection of outrage towards, and threatened consequences for, desperate people who have made a dangerous voyage to escape persecution.

Human rights advocates will take action to test the legality of the Govt's posture. I suggest it contravenes the convention on refugees and other international instruments designed to protect human rights. It probably also contravenes Australian law, which protects individuals from government action taken on the grounds of ethnicity, nationality, religion etc.

I recently parted company with the ALP. This action confirms my decision in spades. We are again witnessing political leaders lose their moral compass over asylum seeking.

Refugees in Australia - the fear drum gets louder as the election gets closer!

2010-03-28T11:07:00.004+11:00

As predicted multiple times on this blog the fear drum is being hammered louder and louder as the days roll on toward a federal election. Every day members of Abbott's fear spruikers gang, both from within the Coalition and the MSM pamphleteer set, come out and hammer Labor on the 'failure' of its border protection policies.

That peculiar program, ABC Insiders, had Ackermann beating the drum this morning, apologizing for the Brisbane based Sunday Mail's front page firing up fear that 'boat people' are in the community, shopping at your shops - be afraid, be very afraid!

Why that nasty piece of work, Ackermann, gets a regular slot on a show that purports to showcase the views of serious political journalists defeats me. He is nothing more than a Murdoch press funded propaganda stooge of the Liberal party. His pronouncements on refugees, or "these people" (as he so subtlety puts it), should be examined by federal authorities as I'm sure they amount to vilification and hate mongering.

Mind you, he is in such bad company, with mainstream Coalition politicians doing the same dirty work routinely to whip up political support. Pyne's outing on Ch 10's Meet the Press this morning being a case in point. It goes on and on and it seems that hate mongering has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government. It reminds me sometimes of an obscure party grabbing public attention in the beer halls of Munich in the 1920s. They banged a few fear drums too! May be the best thing is to laugh at these pathetic loons and sympathize with their obvious challenges!

Refugees in Australia: the idiocy of the 'boat people' scare campaign nailed.

2010-03-11T13:41:00.004+11:00

This post from Pollytics nails the lie that is the fear campaign waged by Abbott and his merry band of drongos as they try to whip up support for their draconian approach to refugees.

In 2008, there were approximately 15.2 million forcibly displaced refugees around the world. The blue square in the corner is the proportion that tried to reach Australia by boat.

"In 2008, France, the UK and Italy combined had 96,870 applications for asylum submitted.

In 2008, 51 industrialised countries participating in the UNHCR statistics program had 382,670 applications for asylum submitted.

In 2008, there were approximately 827,000 asylum applications submitted across the globe

In 2008, there were approximately 15.2 million forcibly displaced refugees around the world.

Yesterday we had SBY address our Parliament – the leader of a country of 230 million people, heading a democratic government that struggles with serious economic and social development issues everyday. He was here to talk about development cooperation, security and intelligence sharing and international economic partnership in the forums of global power to boost living standards and enhance the social and economic ties between our two nations.

What did we bang on about?

Boat people."

Great post Possum....

Australian Federal politics - ABC Insiders does it again on the simple minded front - predicts one term for Labor!

2010-02-21T23:32:00.003+11:00

I sent the following comment to Fran Kelly, who has written Labor off as a one term government on Insiders this morning. I don't know how David Marr et al cope with the mediocrity served up by some of these so-called 'insiders' and God knows what Fran is sniffing but it must be strong!

"I have been concerned about the shallowness of the political analysis served up by this show (Breakfast on Radio National) for some time, and I'm far from being Robinson Crusoe. While Michelle Grattan is always good value, your host is pretty limited on the subject. Her performance on Insiders this morning was woeful.

I don't think the worst of the pamphleteers masquerading as journalists among the Murdoch commentariat would proffer the prediction that Labor is looking like a one term government, although surely it is one of their wet dreams. Perhaps you need to read some of the better psephology and political blogs to get a handle on the polls. The Poll Bludger on Crikey tells us "The latest fortnightly Morgan face-to-face poll has Labor’s two-party lead at 57.5-42.5, up from 56.5-43.5 last time. Labor are up a point to 47 per cent on the primary vote, while the Coalition are down one to 37 per cent." If you continue to rely solely on the dodgy polling of Newspoll, the current figures still have Labor increasing their seats at the next election. I find Essential Report more cogent in its methodology and they have a ten point gap on the 2pp.

Abbott's Murdoch Press driven honeymoon (if that's what it is) will be relatively short lived, once the electorate work out what a truly despicable individual he is. His recent comments on homelessness should be enough to make even the most shallow of radio commentators blanch. But we keep hearing about what a straight talking, lycra-wearing good 'ole boy he really is and he's 'taking it up to the government'. Frankly, this guy is about control and shaping our body politic, with the help of his ilk of alpha male,with the result that Australia would become a much uglier place under his stewardship. His brand of socio-religious patriarchy would determine social policy parameters in such way as to make the previous 'brutupia' look positively benign.

Take the case of refugees. It seems the default position of the Coalition under the influence of Howard (and now Abbott) is to bang the fear and loathing drum at every opportunity. Bi-partisanship on such an important issue as migration and cultural inclusiveness is impossible whilst a major political party sees populist opportunity in scaring people. It is no accident that Hanson's erstwhile mentor, David Oldfield, used to work for Abbott. How did one commentator with a memory longer than yesterday's thought bubble put it? - Abbott is BA Santamaria's terminator sent from the past. Be afraid, be very afraid! And good 'ole Barnaby Joyce sings straight from the good 'ole League of Rights hymn book. Whilst keeping a concerted blow torch to Labor on key areas of social justice, where it is currently sadly wanting, it would be encouraging if political commentary on the ABC was to rise a little above the tawdry attacks on Labor coming from the Murdoch MSM and to do some serious analysis...Good luck with that!"

Human rights in Australia - Leader of the opposition Abbott signals new 'brutopia'.

2010-02-18T09:39:00.003+11:00

Anyone following Australian politics could not have missed Tony Abbott's take on homelessness. Larvatus Prodeo has updated us:

" I was in Canberra last week and had the opportunity to ask Opposition Leader Tony Abbott whether a government under his direction would continue with the Rudd government’s goal of halving homelessness by 2020. His answer was no.

In justifying his stance, Abbott quoted from the Gospel of Matthew: ”The poor will always be with us,” he said, and referred to the fact there is little a government can do for people who choose to be homeless."

While Senator George Brandis tells us Abbott "believes in a settled, rooted society of families and citizens living in stable communities bound together by the gossamer threads of voluntary association", it might be more apt to consider "there might be as Brutopian a streak in communitarian conservatism as anything to be found in Kevin Rudd’s portrait of neo-liberalism."

Frankly, if Abbott is a communitarian then Josef Stalin was just a misunderstood libertarian. This guy is about control by his type of alpha male and Australia would become a much uglier place under his stewardship. His brand of socio-religious patriarchy would determine social policy parameters. Be afraid, very afraid....

Human rights in Australia - An Open Letter to Federal Labor

2010-02-16T10:08:00.002+11:00

I have been a proud supporter of the ALP since 1972. I think the Rudd government is doing a great job responding to the GFC, but the current drift away from social equity as a guiding principle for public policy will see rusted on Labor supporters like me drift away from the party. At the time of the ACT school closures I wrote to the party about the risks of allowing econometrics to underpin public policy directions. You end up with outcomes skewed against the least advantaged. In the short term, it might appeal to yuppie ‘wannabees’ who sell their vote to the highest bidder, who distrust all governments, and who think public policy should be all about raising their disposable incomes, but you will alienate your base over the longer term, during a period when the right will be circling the wagons. The sudden spike in funds pouring into Coalition coffers should sound the warning.

It is clear Federal Labor is pitching to the so-called ‘aspirant’ mob in marginal seats who measure everything through the prism of ‘what is in it for me’, but it is a too cynical for me and I no longer want to be associated with the party. I expect Labor to stand for social justice and human rights and I’m afraid the drift away from these core values is corrosive and disillusioning. It is not just about being good managers of the economy, which I believe Labor is achieving with great aplomb. For example, the ABC 4 corners last night on the plight of carers for disabled in our society should make public policy makers hang their heads in collective shame! The Minister’s performance was weak and uninspiring.

Another great concern to me is the Deputy PM's strategy on school performance. The American school system is inferior in every way to our own, and that includes the NY paradigm. If you want to adapt lessons from successful countries look at the Finnish system. It is clear that the way to get improvements is through initiatives that genuinely support professional development, decent remuneration and other incentives, smaller class sizes and strategic mentoring of classroom teachers by the brightest and best of the teaching profession. Forget the corporate ‘Darwinism’ of the Americans. Facilitating comparative school performance information for public consumption is one of the most egregious scenarios I can contemplate.

A further example is Labor’s cynical approach to the indexation of APS and ADF retiree super pensions. From my perspective this is a broken undertaking with dire consequences for many families. Again, I detect a narrow econometric approach at work that fails to factor the cost-benefit of retirees under less economic duress, their contribution to voluntary social work and the downstream economic benefits of increased expenditure on goods and services and GST from their improved incomes. Get a grip...

Human rights in Australia - social darwinism raises its ugly head in 'my schools' website fiasco

2010-02-01T10:34:00.004+11:00

Back in August 2009 I wrote the following to the Labor party on the apparent obsession of the Deputy PM with an American model of school performance management. Following is part of what I wrote:

"The American school system is inferior in every way to our own, and that includes the NY paradigm. If you want to adapt lessons from successful countries look at the Finnish system. It is clear that the way to get improvements is through initiatives that genuinely support professional development, decent remuneration and other incentives, smaller class sizes and strategic mentoring of classroom teachers by the brightest and best of the teaching profession. Forget the corporate ‘Darwinism’ of the Americans. Facilitating comparative school performance information for public consumption is one of the most egregious scenarios I can contemplate. Don't do it!"

Now, we have the 'my schools' website launched with glee by Julia Gillard. It is an unmitigated disgrace that will deepen social divisions in our society. The stigmatization of poor performing schools, the trumpet blowing by 'selective' schools, the idiotic lumping together of schools that have very little in common apart from some econometric number that exists in a parallel reality to real life. The unexpected negative consequences of this type of ham-fisted statistical measurement are too many to log here.

An article in today's SMH online 'National Times' is well worth a read. Here is part of what Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor have to say:

"So, if, as Gillard advises, there are any lazy teachers needing a kick up the proverbial, don't look for them in a government school. Clearly if the website is correct and government schools are, on average, outperforming many of their fee-charging equivalents, then government school teachers must be working very hard indeed, against the odds. They not only teach more students, they are given vastly less support to do so.

The urgent question is: how long can they maintain this performance in the face of such skewed staffing handicaps?

Some may point out that it may be private resources that are going into paying for this extra staffing in non-government schools, but that still raises the question of why we continue to generously publicly subsidize such well-endowed schools when so many government schools are doing it tough. Private funding drives divides between schools the world over but, as the My School website so tellingly points out, should it be the role of government to continue adding fuel through its funding policies?"

It will come as no surprise that the great majority of schools in Finland - one of the best performing countries in terms of education outcomes - are public funded. The public-private divide in Australia is harmful in terms of achieving social cohesion, particularly as so many private schools underpin an ethos of selective entitlement and economic elitism. The consequences of this type of education can be seen in the divisive and inequitable policies oft peddled by the graduates of such institutions.

For me, it beggars belief that the ALP has facilitated this social 'darwinist' clap-trap and it reflects poorly on its architects.

Human rights in Australia - Australian of the Year gets it right on mandatory detention

2010-01-27T15:41:00.003+11:00

It was encouraging to hear the new Australian of the year, Prof McGorry, say "immigration detention centres were factories for producing mental illness and mental disorder''.

They are and it is about time the ALP stopped pandering to right wing fear mongering on this subject and enabled Australia to meet its international refugee and human rights obligations.

Today's Essential Report has Labor slipping in the area of national security. The silly season produces some daft polling numbers and 2009-10 has been no exception. Add to this a relentless campaign by Abbott and the right wing media to beat the border security drum, and it is likely those members of the permanently credulous, in thrall to these distorted fear messages, will respond by getting behind Abbott and his fellow bandwagoners.

Howard tapped in to the credulity of many Australians with devastating effect. I know as I was one of the benighted public servants dragged into managing his Pacific Solution. The Murdoch press bang the ‘border security’ drum relentlessly, and commercial TV stations like CH7 profile people from ‘mysterious’ places on shows like ‘Border Security’. So, you get a woman wearing a hijab looking suspicious as her bag is searched by a customs officer! Never mind that the great bulk of nasty substance smuggling into this country is orchestrated by home-grown villains.

The numbers of refugees arriving by boats is minuscule compared with the experience of many European countries. It is a sad reflection on the state of our body politic and lack of self-assuredness that the fear messages gain traction but there it is.

Racism in Australia - Leader of the Opposition (Tony Abbott) reveals his true colours

2010-01-23T22:56:00.007+11:00

After a bit of a lay off the latest tawdry attempt by Abbott to create a wedge on 'culture' and 'citizenship' has got my blogging goat up in arms. True to form (it was only a matter of time) Abbott has thrown away the dog whistle in favour of the megaphone.

On the eve of Australia Day he has sounded a call to arms for those in the community in thrall to notions of exclusivity, cultural entitlement and border protection. Faced with fairly ordinary polls, Abbott is doing what Howard and Turnbull did before him - press the 'alert and alarmed' buttons on boat people, cultural diversity and 'Australianess'. We have seen it all before - the 'reds under the beds' mantra of the 50s has been replaced with 'we will decide who comes to this country'. It would be laughable if it was'nt so ugly, with nasty consequences for those caught on the wrong side of what Abbott decrees makes a good Australian.

Following is a little of what he had to say in Melbourne on Friday, as reported by Alexander Kirk on the ABC:

"TONY ABBOTT: To the extent that it is, a celebration of our nation, Australia Day is necessarily a salute to an immigrant culture. What's curious then is the ambivalence that many Australians feel about immigration, even though it's so central to our national experience.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Tony Abbott invoked his former leader John Howard's famous 2001 utterance to argue the need for a tough approach to boat arrivals.

TONY ABBOTT: John Howard's declaration about Australians controlling who comes to his country resonated because it struck most people as self-evidently and robustly true.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: He accepts Australia's obligation to help people fearing for their lives.

TONY ABBOTT: But this has to be balanced against our obligation not to become a soft touch for everyone seeking a better life.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The Opposition Leader has issued a challenge to those who argue Australia's a big country that can easily accommodate the asylum seekers who've come by boat.

TONY ABBOTT: The critics of border protection policy need to ask themselves, at what point would the size of any unauthorised influx become a concern. They further need to explain why it's better to wait for the problem to become worse before tackling it. A strong border protection policy is perfectly consistent with a large and inclusive immigration policy and in fact it's probably essential if the public is to be convinced that Australia's immigration policy is run by the Government rather than by people smugglers."

It seems the default position of the Coalition under the influence of Howard et al is to bang the fear and loathing drum at every opportunity. Bi-partisanship on such an important issue as immigration and cultural inclusiveness is impossible whilst a major political party sees populist opportunity in scaring people.

We can expect more of this nasty nonsense from Abbott as electoral defeat stares him in the face. Frankly, his ilk, extremist bully boys, need to be flushed regularly from the clearing chamber of mainstream politics, or, at the very least, confined to a narrow well-lit down-pipe that is frequently decontaminated.

I recall Abbott was a dab hand with a megaphone outside Fisher Library during our shared days at Sydney University. He was peddling a nasty message back then as well. How did a commentator in the know describe him the other day? I think it was something like 'B A Santamaria's terminator sent from the past' to whip us into shape. I think the Liberal Party would be wise to heed the ancient wisdom - be very careful what you wish for...and watch out for all those nasty migrant gangs (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), you know what I mean!

Human rights in Australia - open letter to Barnaby Joyce on saving the planet (the cutting edge human rights issue of our time)

2009-12-02T09:38:00.003+11:00

I sent this email to Senator Joyce in August. Nothing has changed really!

"Dear Senator

One cannot fail to notice just how much air time is taken up with your posturing. It would be interesting to measure whether you or Senators Fielding or Xenophon get the most attention. I understand why the latter do what they do, because it’s tough to maintain a public profile in ‘single issue’ land.

I notice you have been trumpeting all the support you are getting in ‘virtual’ space on your position toward the CPRS. It may be so but believe me, in electorates where the demographics really count; you are one of the Rudd government’s biggest electoral assets. So, congratulations on ensuring your side of politics remain in opposition for quite a while to come – as it stands that is probably in the national interest. Your pugnacious smugness may go down well with certain of the private school ‘cockey’ crowd, but some of us find it a tad immature. I know where these attitudes were honed as I also went to one of those private bastions of ‘born to ruledom’!

The minimum temperature in Canberra last night was 12 degrees! It should be below 5 degrees. Plants that never flowered before late September now routinely come out in mid-August. The carbon paradigm (to use a much belaboured term) has to shift. In the end I would be very surprised if agriculture is in the mix as that would preclude a deal with India and China, and they must be brought to the table. If advanced economies like Australia are not prepared to model constructive change then the planet is frankly stuffed. Blind freddy can see climate change is a reality and that carbon emissions are a major component. If we do not get a bi-partisan position on climate change, history will not be kind to our generation.

Your line on a Rudd tax on everything as a reductionist critique of the ETS will no doubt resonate with your supporters, although I note the only government in recent times to put their hands in everyone’s pockets through the introduction of a new tax was Howard’s with his GST. I’m sure you think you are on a political winner with this glib line, but I suggest you spend too much time talking to the credulous converted. We need politicians to rise above sloganeering and to do the hard policy work to wring change."

Amongst all the hyperbole about 'thousands' of emails flooding in support of trashing the ETS, which is not that far removed from the policy the Coalition took to the last federal election, it will come as no surprise that Senator Joyce chose not to reply to this one.

Labor all at sea on asylum seekers - but an opportunity presents itself.

2009-11-03T08:37:00.004+11:00

The ongoing tragedy of desperate people prepared to put their lives at risk in small boats is being played out as I write. It seems up to 11 people have lost their life in the latest sinking in our maritime rescue area. The 78 refusing to leave the customs vessel in Indonesia are threatening self-harm rather than return to the Indonesian 'refugee warehouse', which was part of the Howard solution.

Rudd is between a rock and hard place, politically speaking, as the Coalition and its conga line of fear mongers in the media whip up the refugee issue yet again. Many people are very prone to xenophobic responses on 'boat people', choosing to believe the fear drum beaten relentlessly by Turnbull, Stone, Andrews and Ruddock et al. There appears to be something in a large slice of the collective psyche that responds negatively to people arriving on boats. It is a sad reflection on our maturity and self-assuredness as a nation state but there it is!

The drum beat of division and exclusion is coming from many quarters. Half-baked commentary and so-called 'straw polls' are the bread & butter of shock jocks, Sky News and commercial TV shows like ACA. Even the ABC is getting in on the act to whip up division and confusion.

The issues surrounding the Australian vessel in Indonesia are complex and almost parenthetical to the broader issues surrounding asylum seekers. This situation involves protocols surrounding the duty of care under the law of the sea etc etc.

In terms of the broader issues as they apply to refugees, I have worked in this area so I know a bit about the subject. I was a member of the previous Prime Minister's task force on 'illegal immigration'.

The Coalition Govt turned itself inside out to leverage Indonesian support for the process of 'warehousing' asylum seekers in various parts of Indonesia. Unfortunately for Labor our erstwhile government did not bother to properly resource the UNHCR, the IOM or the Indonesian authorities in order to manage the processing of refugee claims humanely, efficiently and expeditiously.

Now that PM Rudd is looking to build on the Howard government approach, taking a more systematic and humane approach to the processing problem, elements within the Indonesian establishment are unhappy at the prospect. They have seen Australia dump the problem on their laps before, with little compensation and support.

Rudd has an opportunity to change the construct through the provision of adequate resources to the lead agencies and the Indonesian authorities. It is vital that a compassionate approach is taken to detention, enabling asylum seekers to retain their dignity and well-being whilst awaiting decisions on their future.

Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers, the respective processing authorities, and the countries in the firing line. Opening a regional dialogue and developing a well-resourced multilateral approach, empowering all parties with a stake in a solution to this growing human crisis, would be a good start.

The current Newspoll might suggest that the drum beat is working for the purveyors of fear and division but the Government must develop a long term strategy that gets the body politic past this boat driven psychosis.

I found this piece on The Piping Shrike well-reasoned and informed. The writer concludes:

"What both Prime Ministers had in common was not only the encouragement of setting up international camps, but making a secret of them and presenting border protection as a unilateral policy of the Australian government. That is no longer possible. The Liberals know it, which is why they agreed with Labor to drop the measures in the first place, which even now they can’t argue should be restored. The conditions that allowed Fraser and Howard to get away with such a ruse are no longer there and so this government needs to politically neutralise an issue that has been so useful for past ones. There is one final striking thing about the Rudd media tour. He is the only one doing it. Because at the end of the day, he is probably the only one in the government who knows how."

Asylum seekers in Australia - Even the ABC beats the drum of division and exclusion!

2009-10-29T09:55:00.003+11:00

I sent the following message to ABC Radio 666 Canberra this morning after their breakfast presenter thought it would be clever to run a straw poll on his program on what should happen to the Sri Lankans on the Australian customs vessel:

"I don't usually listen to Solly at breakfast as I find his simple minded pandering to the lowest common denominator a bit much to stomach - why ABC feels the need to compete with commercial talk back is beyond me. Our public broadcaster should be very careful with an incendiary issue such as asylum seekers. The drum beat of division and exclusion is coming from many quarters. Half-baked commentary and so-called 'straw polls' are the bread & butter of shock jocks, Sky News and low rent programs like ACA etc.

The issues surrounding the Australian vessel in Indonesia are complex and almost parenthetical to the broader issues surrounding asylum seekers.

I have worked in this area so I know a bit about the subject.

The Coalition Govt turned itself inside out to leverage Indonesian support for the idea of 'warehousing' asylum seekers in Lombok and other places. Unfortunately for Labor our erstwhile govt did not bother to properly resource the UNHCR and the IOM to manage the Indonesian processing of refugee claims humanely, efficiently and expeditiously.

Now that Rudd is looking to build on the Howard govt approach, taking a more systematic and humane approach to the processing problem, elements within the Indonesian establishment are unhappy at the prospect. They have seen Australia dump the problem on their laps before, but with little compensation and support.

Rudd has an opportunity to change the construct through adequate resourcing of the lead agencies and the Indonesian authorities. It is vital that a compassionate approach is taken to detention, enabling asylum seekers to retain their dignity and well-being whilst awaiting decisions on their future.

Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers, the respective processing authorities, and the countries in the firing line."

You would think the ABC would demonstrate a bit more responsibility in this area, particularly given the presenter knew very little about the complex issues surrounding this current conundrum.

Asylum seekers in Australia - Coalition strategy of warehousing refugees in Indonesia comes home to bite Labor - an opportunity presents itself!

2009-10-28T10:51:00.004+11:00

The Coalition Govt turned itself inside out to leverage Indonesian support for the idea of 'warehousing' asylum seekers in Lombok and other places. Unfortunately for Labor our erstwhile govt did not bother to properly resource the UNHCR and the IOM to manage the Indonesian processing of refugee claims humanely, efficiently and expeditiously.

Now that Rudd is looking to build on the Howard govt approach, taking a more systematic and humane approach to the processing problem, elements within the Indonesian establishment are 'arking up' at the prospect. They have seen Australia dump the problem on their laps before, but with little compensation and support.

Rudd has an opportunity to change the construct through adequate resourcing of the lead agencies and the Indonesian authorities. It is vital that a compassionate approach is taken to detention, enabling asylum seekers to retain their dignity and well-being whilst awaiting decisions on their future.

Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers and the respective processing authorities. Australians interested in seeing their govt do the right thing should lobby their local members of parliament and the Minister for Immigration. Do not be conned by the rhetoric of the Coalition as they have no credibility on this subject.

Asylum seekers in Australia - Media Watch calls out Channel 9 and shock jocks for replacing the dog whistle with the drum beat of fear

2009-10-27T08:54:00.005+11:00

"Howard Sattler: Now we're going to talk about another kind of rip-off. We're going to talk about the welfare rip-off by a lot of people who claim refugee status. Would you believe, this is the figures, the Centrelink benefits have gone up nearly 40% to an estimated $628 million over two years"

— Radio 6PR Perth, Drive with Howard Sattler, 20th October, 2009

This charming offering from one of the most egregious offenders on the air waves set the scene for a timely indictment of a substantial slice of commercial media for its lack of integrity, honesty and moral compass in its treatment of Centrelink data on asylum seekers.

Watch the Media Watch program here.

Crikey,quelle surprise, golly gosh - what a bunch of low life bottom feeders! And they all support the Coalition...